What is pino?
Pino is a very low overhead Node.js logger, which is inspired by Bunyan. It is designed to be as minimal as possible and to perform logging tasks with a very small performance overhead. Pino provides a simple to use API for structured logging and can be easily integrated with different transports for log processing.
What are pino's main functionalities?
Basic Logging
This feature allows you to perform basic logging tasks, such as logging informational messages.
const pino = require('pino');
const logger = pino();
logger.info('Hello, this is an info message!');
Logging with Different Levels
Pino allows you to log messages with different severity levels, such as error, warn, and debug.
const logger = pino();
logger.error('This is an error message');
logger.warn('This is a warning message');
logger.debug('This is a debug message');
Child Loggers
You can create child loggers from a parent logger, which can inherit the configuration of the parent and can also have additional properties.
const parentLogger = pino();
const childLogger = parentLogger.child({ a: 'property' });
childLogger.info('Hello from child logger');
Custom Serializers
Pino allows you to define custom serializers for logging objects in a specific way.
const logger = pino({
serializers: {
req: (req) => ({ method: req.method, url: req.url })
}
});
logger.info({ req: requestObject }, 'Request log message');
Pretty Printing
For development purposes, Pino can be combined with the 'pino-pretty' module to format logs in a more readable way.
const pino = require('pino');
const pretty = require('pino-pretty');
const logger = pino(pretty());
logger.info('This will be pretty printed');
Other packages similar to pino
winston
Winston is a multi-transport async logging library for Node.js. It is designed to be a simple and universal logging library with support for multiple transports. Compared to Pino, Winston is more feature-rich and configurable but can be heavier on performance.
bunyan
Bunyan is a simple and fast JSON logging library for Node.js services. Like Pino, it is inspired by the Unix philosophy and focuses on structured logging. Bunyan is more similar to Pino in terms of philosophy, but Pino claims to be faster and more efficient.
log4js
Log4js is a logging framework for Node.js, which provides flexible configuration and supports multiple appenders. It is similar to the Log4j library for Java. Compared to Pino, Log4js offers more traditional logging features but may not be as performance-optimized.
pino
Very low overhead Node.js logger.
Documentation
Install
Using NPM:
$ npm install pino
Using YARN:
$ yarn add pino
If you would like to install pino v6, refer to https://github.com/pinojs/pino/tree/v6.x.
Usage
const logger = require('pino')()
logger.info('hello world')
const child = logger.child({ a: 'property' })
child.info('hello child!')
This produces:
{"level":30,"time":1531171074631,"msg":"hello world","pid":657,"hostname":"Davids-MBP-3.fritz.box"}
{"level":30,"time":1531171082399,"msg":"hello child!","pid":657,"hostname":"Davids-MBP-3.fritz.box","a":"property"}
For using Pino with a web framework see:
Essentials
Development Formatting
The pino-pretty
module can be used to
format logs during development:
Transports & Log Processing
Due to Node's single-threaded event-loop, it's highly recommended that sending,
alert triggering, reformatting, and all forms of log processing
are conducted in a separate process or thread.
In Pino terminology, we call all log processors "transports" and recommend that the
transports be run in a worker thread using our pino.transport
API.
For more details see our Transports⇗ document.
Low overhead
Using minimum resources for logging is very important. Log messages
tend to get added over time and this can lead to a throttling effect
on applications – such as reduced requests per second.
In many cases, Pino is over 5x faster than alternatives.
See the Benchmarks document for comparisons.
Bundling support
Pino supports being bundled using tools like webpack or esbuild.
See Bundling document for more information.
The Team
Matteo Collina
https://github.com/mcollina
https://www.npmjs.com/~matteo.collina
https://twitter.com/matteocollina
David Mark Clements
https://github.com/davidmarkclements
https://www.npmjs.com/~davidmarkclements
https://twitter.com/davidmarkclem
James Sumners
https://github.com/jsumners
https://www.npmjs.com/~jsumners
https://twitter.com/jsumners79
Thomas Watson Steen
https://github.com/watson
https://www.npmjs.com/~watson
https://twitter.com/wa7son
Contributing
Pino is an OPEN Open Source Project. This means that:
Individuals making significant and valuable contributions are given commit-access to the project to contribute as they see fit. This project is more like an open wiki than a standard guarded open source project.
See the CONTRIBUTING.md file for more details.
Acknowledgments
This project was kindly sponsored by nearForm.
Logo and identity designed by Cosmic Fox Design: https://www.behance.net/cosmicfox.
License
Licensed under MIT.