logctx

📦 logctx

A lightweight, context-aware logger built on top of Pino, using async_hooks and supporting decorators, DI, and easy context propagation across HTTP or Kafka requests.

🚀 Features

• ✅ Automatically injects context like userId, traceId, etc., into logs
• ✅ Built with async_hooks for request-safe storage
• ✅ Compatible with any Node.js framework (Express, Kafka, etc.)
• ✅ Optional class decorator @WithLogger() for automatic logger injection
• ✅ Customizable context shape with zero config by default
• ✅ Built-in support for Pino transports like pino-pretty
• ✅ Supports JSON or human-readable log formats via env
• ✅ Optional log-to-file support with file rotation capability
• ✅ Supports a generic logging middleware compatible with any framework

📦 Installation

npm install logctx

Or with Yarn:

yarn add logctx

🛠️ Basic Usage

1. Import and use logger

import { runWithContext, ContextualLogger } from 'logctx';

const logger = new ContextualLogger();

runWithContext({ userId: '123', traceId: 'xyz' }, () => {
  logger.log.info('This will include userId and traceId');
});

2. Use @WithLogger() Decorator

import { WithLogger } from 'logctx';

@WithLogger()
class UserService {
  private log: any;
  doWork() {
    this.log.info('Logged with contextual metadata');
  }
}

⚠️ Make sure you use a DI container (like typedi) or Container.get(UserService) so decorators are respected.

3. Configure Custom Context Getter (Optional)

By default, the logger uses whatever was passed via runWithContext. But you can override this globally:

import { configureLoggerContext } from 'logctx';

configureLoggerContext(() => ({
  userId: 'fallback-user',
  tenantId: 'default-tenant'
}));

⚙️ Environment Variables

Variable	Description	Default
APP_NAME	Name to appear in logs	logctx
LOG_LEVEL	Logging level (debug, info, warn, error)	info
LOG_FORMAT	Log output format: json or pretty	json
LOG_TO_FILE	Enable file logging: true or false	false
LOG_FILE_PATH	File path to store logs (if LOG_TO_FILE=true)	./logs/app.log

🧠 API Reference

runWithContext(context, callback)

Wraps a function with the provided context for async propagation.

runWithContext({ userId: 'abc' }, () => {
  logger.log.info('userId will be injected');
});

configureLoggerContext(getterFn)

Globally defines a fallback context getter if none is set.

configureLoggerContext(() => ({ tenant: 'main', traceId: 'auto' }));

ContextualLogger

Provides a .log object with info, error, warn, and debug.

const logger = new ContextualLogger();
logger.log.info('message');

@WithLogger()

Injects this.log into any class. Works well with service or controller patterns.

@WithLogger()
class MyService {
  private log: LoggerType; // optional for type hint
  doSomething() {
    this.log.info('Message with context');
  }
}

With middleware

Here's how you can integrate logctx into an Express application to enable contextual logging based on headers, query parameters, cookies, and route parameters.

import { createContextLogger, ContextualLogger } from "logctx";
import express from "express";

const logger = new ContextualLogger();

// Middleware to initialize context logger
function middleware(
    req: express.Request,
    res: express.Response,
    next: express.NextFunction
) {
    createContextLogger(req, next, {
        headers: ['x-request-id', 'user-agent'],
        queries: ['queryParam'],
        cookies: ['sessionId'],
        params: ['param1', 'param2'],
    });
    next(); // Important: call next middleware after context setup
}

const app = express();
app.use(middleware);

// Sample route using contextual logger
app.get('/', (req, res) => {
    logger.log.info('Request received');
    res.send('Hello from Express with Contextual Logger!');
});

app.listen(3000, () => {
    console.log('Server is running on http://localhost:3000');
});

💡 Use Cases

• Log userId, tenantId, traceId across microservices
• Contextual logging for HTTP, WebSocket, Kafka
• Decorator-based logging without boilerplate
• Enforce consistent metadata across logs
• Switch easily between JSON and pretty logs using environment
• Persist logs to disk for production systems
• Use middleware with any NodeJS frameworks.

🧪 Example

import { runWithContext, ContextualLogger } from 'logctx';

const logger = new ContextualLogger();

runWithContext({ userId: 'U001' }, () => {
  logger.log.info('User event started'); // includes userId automatically
});

👨‍💻 Contributing

Pull requests, issues, and suggestions welcome!

git clone https://github.com/AjayKrP/logctx.git
npm install
npm run build