Logging in Pionia

At its core, Pionia uses the Monolog library to handle logging.

Initialization#

Logging is inbuilt in Pionia. To view the logs in real-time, you can run the following command in a different terminal window pointing to your log file, which is by default server.log:

tail -f server.log # replace server.log with your log file

Usage#

Anywhere in your app, just call the logger constant to log messages. The following log levels are available:

public function getItem(): ?object
{
    logger->info("Getting item");
    logger->debug("Getting item");
    logger->critical("Getting item");
    logger->error("Getting item");
    logger->warning("Getting item");
    logger->notice("Getting item");
    logger->alert("Getting item");
    logger->emergency("Getting item");
    $data = $this->request->getData();
    $this->requires([$this->pk_field]);
    $id = $data[$this->pk_field];
    $item = Porm::from($this->table)->columns($this->listColumns)->get($id);
    logger->info("Gotten item");
    return $item;
}

The above code will log messages at different levels. You can then view the logs in the server.log file.

[2024-07-08T15:29:28.809573+00:00] pionia.INFO >> Getting item ::  
[2024-07-08T15:29:28.809623+00:00] pionia.DEBUG >> Getting item ::  
[2024-07-08T15:29:28.809654+00:00] pionia.CRITICAL >> Getting item ::  
[2024-07-08T15:29:28.809680+00:00] pionia.ERROR >> Getting item ::  
[2024-07-08T15:29:28.809706+00:00] pionia.WARNING >> Getting item ::  
[2024-07-08T15:29:28.809728+00:00] pionia.NOTICE >> Getting item ::  
[2024-07-08T15:29:28.809751+00:00] pionia.ALERT >> Getting item ::  
[2024-07-08T15:29:28.809773+00:00] pionia.EMERGENCY >> Getting item ::  
[2024-07-08T15:29:28.811627+00:00] pionia.INFO >> Gotten item :: 

Customization#

Log File#

You can change the file to log to by defining the log destination in the settings.ini file:

[SERVER]
LOG_DESTINATION=server.log

If you want to log to php://stdout, you can define the log destination as stdout.

[SERVER]
LOG_DESTINATION=stdout

Log Format#

You can also change the log format by defining the log format in the settings.ini file:

[SERVER]
LOG_FORMAT=TEXT

Log formats can be TEXT or JSON.

Logging Settings#

You can define the sections of settings.ini you want to log along:

[LOGGER]
LOGGED_SETTINGS=db,SERVER

Securing Log Entries#

You can hide sensitive information from the logs by defining the sensitive fields in the settings.ini file:

HIDE_IN_LOGS=password,pin,acc

The above means that whenever a log entry contains any of the fields password, pin, or acc, the value will be replaced with *******.

You can also define the string to replace the sensitive fields with:

HIDE_SUB=**********

Turning off logs#

You can simply turn off DEBUG mode in the settings.ini file:

[SERVER]
DEBUG=false

However much this is okay, but sometimes, if not most times, we would want to leave the logs on even when we are not in DEBUG mode.

The following settings can be defined in the settings.ini file:

Logging Requests#

You can log requests by defining the LOG_REQUESTS setting in the settings.ini file:

[SERVER]
LOG_REQUESTS=true

Whether in DEBUG or not, if the above is turned on, all requests will be logged. By default, this attempts to log both the requests and responses. However, Responses are sometimes heavy and you may choose to omit them. You can do so by defining the LOG_RESPONSES setting in the settings.ini file:

[SERVER]
LOG_RESPONSES=false

Also, defining the LOG_RESPONSES setting as true will log only the responses without the requests.

With version 1.1.4, you can also define which Monolog processors you would like to include.

You can achieve this by defining the LOG_PROCESSORS setting in the settings.ini file:

[SERVER]
LOG_PROCESSORS=Monolog\Processor\ProcessIdProcessor, Monolog\Processor\MemoryUsageProcessor

By default, no processor is added to the logger.

With the above, you app now logs the process id and memory usage in the logs.

Renaming the logs.#

By default, all logs indicate the pionia prefix. You can change this by defining the APP_NAME setting in the settings.ini file:

[SERVER]
APP_NAME=blog

The above will change the prefix to blog.

Log Rotation#

Pionia avoids dictating how you should handle log rotation. You can use the logrotate utility to rotate logs. Here is an example configuration for log rotation:

/path/to/your/log/file {
    daily
    rotate 7
    compress
    delaycompress
    missingok
    notifempty
    create
}

There is a cool article about handling log rotation here.

That’s it! You now know how to log in Pionia.