itslog

itslog

itslog is a log formatter designed to aid rails development.

The formatting will prepend all log statements with a colored header and additional information about the statement. The information and structure of the new statements is customizable through configuration.

[timestamp] [rails namespace] [log message], example:

Errors and warnings will also stand out, example:

In addition to more readable logs, you can tail and grep specific parts of your application. example:

tail -f log/development.log | grep active_record

Use itslog in conjunction with axe for faster access to your logs.

Install

Add to your Gemfile in Rails:

group :development, :test do
  gem 'itslog'
end

Configure

Itslog does not need to be configured unless you want to customize the output structure and color.

Example:

if Rails.env.development? || Rails.env.test?

  Itslog.configure do |config|
    config.namespace_colors = {
      'action_controller' => "\e[32m",
      'active_record'     => "\e[94m",
      'mongo'             => "\e[94m",
      'action_view'       => "\e[36m"
    }
    config.format = "%t [%n]: %m"
    config.message_color = "\e[37m"
    config.timestamp_format = "%Y-%b-%d %H:%M:%S %z"
  end

end

Configure format by building a string anyway you'd like and using the following variables:

%t (timestamp)
%n (namespace)
%m (log message)

Configure time format using a strftime format string. foragoodstrftime is a nice reference.

I don't recommend coloring by severity because it's not very useful. To color by severity instead of the default of namespace:

if Rails.env.development? || Rails.env.test?

  Itslog.configure do |config|
    config.color_by :severity
    # debug, info, warning, error, fatal, unknown
    config.severity_colors = ["\e[36m","\e[32m","\e[33m","\e[31m","\e[31m","\e[37m"]
  end

end

Place the configuration in an initializer:

config/initializers/itslog.rb

Reference

An example set of ANSI colors:

\e[30m grey
\e[31m red
\e[32m green
\e[33m yellow
\e[34m purple
\e[35m pink
\e[36m cyan
\e[37m white

\e[90m light grey
\e[91m light red
\e[92m light green
\e[93m light yellow
\e[94m light purple
\e[95m light pink
\e[96m light cyan

All additional information can be found in this video: The Log Song

Contact

Please message me through github if you have any feature requests or issues. Thank you for all your feedback so far.