devink

devink

A fast, lightweight, and professional TypeScript logger with zero dependencies. Keep your terminal cool, soothing, and strictly structured.

devink is a zero-dependency Node.js logger designed for developers who need high performance, beautiful CLI output, and structured JSON logging. Child loggers, HTTP middleware, file transport with rotation, log sampling, field redaction, pretty error formatting — all built in with full TypeScript support and zero external dependencies.

🚀 Features

• Zero Dependencies — Ultra-fast, nothing in node_modules except your own code.
• Child Loggers — Scoped, namespaced loggers with inherited configuration.
• HTTP Middleware — Framework-agnostic request logging for Express, Fastify, Hono, and more.
• File Transport with Rotation — Built-in async file transport with size-based rotation and retention.
• Log Grouping — Visual grouping for multi-step operations with indented output.
• Performance Timers — Measure execution time with logger.time() / logger.timeEnd().
• Log Sampling / Rate Limiting — Only log a fraction of high-frequency events in production.
• Sensitive Field Redaction — Automatically mask passwords, tokens, and secrets from log output.
• Pretty Error Formatting — Colored stack traces with highlighted source locations.
• Full ANSI & 256/RGB Color Support — Beautiful, soothing UI themes for the terminal.
• Structured JSON Logging — One-line switch to JSON for Datadog, ELK, AWS CloudWatch, and more.
• Log Levels & Priority Filtering — Granular control via trace, debug, info, warn, error, and fatal.
• Custom Transports — Route logs to files, external APIs, or custom formatting engines.
• Terminal Capability Detection — Auto-detects TTY, FORCE_COLOR, NO_COLOR, and CI environments.
• Boxed Output — Unicode-boxed messages for critical startup and alert information.
• TypeScript Native — Built with TypeScript, full type definitions included.

📦 Installation

npm install devink

yarn add devink

pnpm add devink

💻 Quick Start

Basic Logger

import { createLogger } from 'devink';

const logger = createLogger({
  timestamps: true,
  level: 'info',
});

logger.info('Server started on port 3000');
logger.success('Database connected successfully');
logger.warn('Rate limit approaching');
logger.error(new Error('Connection timeout'));

Structured JSON Logging

Perfect for production environments where log aggregation is crucial:

const logger = createLogger({
  mode: 'json',
  level: 'trace',
});

logger.info('Processing payment', { userId: 123, amount: 49.99 });
// {"level":"info","time":"2026-03-03T00:00:00.000Z","message":["Processing payment",{"userId":123,"amount":49.99}]}

Child Loggers / Namespaced Logging

Create scoped loggers that inherit the parent configuration and prepend a namespace to every log line:

import { createLogger } from 'devink';

const logger = createLogger({ timestamps: true });

const dbLogger = logger.child({ namespace: 'db' });
const authLogger = logger.child({ namespace: 'auth' });

dbLogger.info('Query executed in 12ms');
// [14:30:00] [db] ℹ info Query executed in 12ms

authLogger.warn('Token expires in 5 minutes');
// [14:30:00] [auth] ⚠ warn Token expires in 5 minutes

Child loggers can also carry default metadata:

const requestLogger = logger.child({ namespace: 'api', requestId: 'abc-123' });
requestLogger.info('Request received');
// In JSON mode: {"level":"info","namespace":"api","requestId":"abc-123","message":"Request received"}

🌐 HTTP Request Middleware

Framework-agnostic middleware that auto-logs every HTTP request with method, path, status code, and response time:

import { createLogger, httpMiddleware } from 'devink';
import express from 'express';

const logger = createLogger({ timestamps: true });
const app = express();

app.use(httpMiddleware(logger));

// Every request automatically logged:
// [14:30:05] ℹ info GET /api/users 200 12ms
// [14:30:06] ⚠ warn POST /api/login 401 8ms
// [14:30:07] ✖ error GET /api/crash 500 3ms

Works with Express, Fastify, Hono, Koa, and any framework using the standard (req, res, next) pattern.

📂 Log Grouping / Indented Sections

Visually group related log lines for multi-step operations:

const logger = createLogger({ timestamps: true });

logger.group('Database Migration');
logger.info('Running migration 001_create_users...');
logger.info('Running migration 002_add_indexes...');
logger.success('All migrations complete');
logger.groupEnd();

logger.info('Server ready');

Output:

[14:30:00] ▸ Database Migration
[14:30:00]   ℹ info Running migration 001_create_users...
[14:30:01]   ℹ info Running migration 002_add_indexes...
[14:30:01]   ✔ success All migrations complete
[14:30:01] ℹ info Server ready

⏱ Performance Timers

Measure execution time for any operation directly from the logger:

const logger = createLogger();

logger.time('database-query');
await db.query('SELECT * FROM users');
logger.timeEnd('database-query');
// ℹ info database-query: 243ms

logger.time('api-call');
await fetch('https://api.example.com/data');
logger.timeEnd('api-call');
// ℹ info api-call: 891ms

📊 Log Sampling / Rate Limiting

In high-throughput production environments, log only a fraction of repetitive events:

const logger = createLogger({
  sampling: {
    'db.query': 0.1, // log 10% of database queries
    'cache.hit': 0.01, // log 1% of cache hits
  },
});

// Only ~10% of these calls will actually produce output
logger.info('Query executed', { table: 'users' });

📁 Async File Transport

Built-in file transport with async writes and automatic log rotation:

import { createLogger, FileTransport } from 'devink';

const logger = createLogger({
  transports: [
    new FileTransport({
      path: './logs/app.log',
      maxSize: '10mb',
      maxFiles: 5,
      rotate: true,
    }),
  ],
});

logger.info('This goes to a file with automatic rotation');

When app.log exceeds 10 MB, it rotates to app.log.1, app.log.2, etc., keeping at most 5 rotated files.

🔒 Sensitive Field Redaction

Automatically mask sensitive data before it reaches any transport:

const logger = createLogger({
  redact: ['password', 'token', 'authorization', 'ssn'],
});

logger.info('User login', { user: 'harry', password: 's3cret!', token: 'eyJhbG...' });
// ℹ info User login { user: 'harry', password: '[REDACTED]', token: '[REDACTED]' }

Redaction works recursively on nested objects and in both text and JSON modes.

💥 Pretty Error Formatting

When you pass an Error object, devink renders a beautiful, colored stack trace instead of a raw dump:

const logger = createLogger();

try {
  throw new Error('Database connection failed');
} catch (err) {
  logger.error('Fatal error during startup', err);
}

• Error name and message in bold red
• Your source files highlighted with colored file paths and line numbers
• node_modules and Node.js internal frames dimmed so your code stands out

🎁 Boxed Output

Make important startup messages or critical alerts pop in the console:

const logger = createLogger();

logger.box(
  'System Ready',
  'All microservices have booted successfully.\nListening on http://localhost:8080',
);

⚙️ Configuration

The createLogger function accepts an optional LoggerOptions object:

Property	Type	Default	Description
level	LogLevelName	'trace'	Minimum log level (trace < debug < info < warn < error < fatal).
mode	'text' | 'json'	'text'	Output mode. Text for the console, JSON for log aggregators.
colors	boolean	true	ANSI colors. Automatically disabled if the terminal doesn't support it.
timestamps	boolean	false	Prepend a timestamp ([HH:MM:SS]) to text outputs.
theme	Partial<Theme>	modernTheme	Customize prefix icons and color functions for each log level.
transports	Transport[]	[ConsoleTransport]	Target output destinations (console, file, external APIs).
namespace	string	''	Namespace prefix prepended to all log lines.
redact	string[]	[]	Field names to mask with [REDACTED] in log output.
sampling	Record<string, number>	{}	Sampling rates (0–1) for rate-limiting high-frequency log events.

Theme Presets

devink ships with several UI/UX optimized presets, designed for accessibility and developer comfort:

• modernTheme (Default): Soft, cool hex colors (#10b981, #f43f5e, #38bdf8) with dim text to prevent eye strain.
• classicTheme: Standard ANSI colors (Red, Green, Yellow, Cyan).
• minimalTheme: Prefix icons only, without extra text like "success" or "error".

import { createLogger, classicTheme } from 'devink';

const logger = createLogger({
  theme: classicTheme,
});

Custom Transports

Route logs anywhere by implementing the Transport interface:

import { createLogger, Transport, TransportContext } from 'devink';
import fs from 'node:fs';

class CustomTransport implements Transport {
  write(ctx: TransportContext) {
    fs.appendFileSync('custom.log', ctx.raw + '\n');
  }
}

const logger = createLogger({
  transports: [new CustomTransport()],
});

🎨 ANSI Utilities

Build your own CLI tools with devink's high-performance, zero-dependency ANSI utilities:

import { ansi } from 'devink';

console.log(ansi.rgb(255, 100, 50, 'True RGB text!'));
console.log(ansi.hex('#34d399', 'Hex coded text!'));
console.log(ansi.color256(128, '256 color terminal support!'));
console.log(ansi.bold(ansi.cyan('Bold and cyan!')));

📊 Comparison: devink vs pino vs winston vs bunyan

Feature	devink	pino	winston	bunyan
Zero Dependencies	✅	❌	❌	❌
TypeScript Native	✅	❌ (types pkg)	❌ (types pkg)	❌
Child Loggers	✅	✅	✅	✅
HTTP Middleware (built-in)	✅	❌ (separate)	❌ (separate)	❌
File Transport (built-in)	✅	❌ (separate)	✅	✅
Log Rotation (built-in)	✅	❌	❌ (separate)	❌ (separate)
Log Sampling	✅	❌	❌	❌
Field Redaction	✅	✅	❌	❌
Pretty Error Formatting	✅	❌ (separate)	❌	❌
Log Grouping	✅	❌	❌	❌
Performance Timers	✅	❌	❌	❌
Colored ANSI Output	✅	❌ (separate)	❌ (separate)	❌
Boxed Output	✅	❌	❌	❌
JSON Structured Logging	✅	✅	✅	✅
Custom Themes	✅	❌	❌	❌
Bundle Size	~8KB	~120KB	~280KB	~95KB

🗺️ Roadmap

These features are planned for upcoming releases:

• 🌐 Browser Support — Universal logger that works in both Node.js and browser DevTools.
• 🔗 OpenTelemetry Integration — Automatic traceId and spanId injection.
• 📡 Log Aggregator Presets — One-line setup for Datadog, Loki, and Elasticsearch.
• 🖥️ Interactive CLI Mode — Live log panel with filtering for development.

Built with ❤️ by Harry Mate. 🌟 If you find this library helpful, consider dropping a Star on GitHub and following me (@harrymate22) for more open-source tools!

License

MIT © harrymate22