brawny

Brawny: A friendly-faced logger.

Brawny is a generic logging frontend with a set of pluggable backends, for node and the browser. It's intended to be far simpler (but is certainly inspired by) than other logging solutions, like winston or bunyan.

Brawny uses different "transports" for its various backends. A transport is a plugin that receives your log message and optional metadata and log level, and then logs the message on your behalf. Logs are processed asynchronously (this is a nice common denominator for transports that send data via xhr, etc.), and you can optionally be notified when your message has been logged.

brawny comes with a many backends, including a basic console backend, but is made with extensibility in mind. Imagine sending logs to an HTTP endpoint, or directly to your favorite error reporting service.

Here's a quick example:

var brawny = require('brawny');
var console_ = require('brawny/lib/transports/console');
 
brawny.use(console_);
 
brawny.log('this will be sent to console.log');
brawny.error('this will be sent to console.error');
brawny.warn('this will be sent to console.warn');

Installation

Simply npm install brawny.

API

install with npm and then:

var brawny = require('brawny') in browserify, webpack, node, or iojs

requiring brawny yields a default logger with a factory attached to create additional loggers.

brawny.create('myapp', opts={level: 'info'})

Creates a new brawny logger with the specified name. opts defaults to using a logger level of info. Add meta: {custom: 'data'} to opts to forward custom logger-level data to all transports.

brawny.level

Public property representing the logger's level. Change this to alter the logger's verbosity.

brawny.use(transport)

Add a transport plugin to this logger. Any log messages that meet this logger's level will be forwarded to all transports.

brawny.log(level, msg, meta, done)

Send a JSON-stringifyable message msg to all of this logger's transports if the message's loglevel exceeds both the logger's level and the transport's level. For instance, if a warn message is sent to a logger with level info with two transports in use, one with a warn level and the other with an error level, the message will only be sent to the warn transport.

It is highly recommended to send an Error object as the message when invoking brawny.error(). This way, transports that report exceptions can send along a stacktrace of where the error occurred.

Metadata meta will be sent to each transport, and it is up to the transport to use it.

Asynchronously calls callback done once all relevant transports have completed logging.

brawny.debug() / brawny.info() / brawny.warn() / brawny.error()

These are all shortcuts for brawny.log(level, ...) for their respective log levels.

brawny.exception()

Alias for brawny.error()

brawny.try(toTry, meta, done)

Immediately calls the provided function toTry in a try...catch and send any errors to this logger's error() handler. toTry may also be a Promise, where its rejection would be handled by the error() handler as well.

If toTry is a function that returns a Promise, that promise's rejection will also be handled.

Be sure to use Function.prototype.bind if you intend to maintain function context.

All thrown exceptions and promise rejections are re-raised!

Asynchronously calls callback done once all relevant transports have completed logging. done() will not be invoked if no error ocurred.

Some examples:

 brawny.try(function () {
      throw new Error('oh noes!!!')
 }, function () {
      // at this point, all transports were notified of
      // the error.
 });

or with a rejected Promise:

 brawny.try(fetch('http://doesnotexist.com/foobar'));

... and brawny will report any errors.

brawny.wrap(fn, meta, done)

Wraps the provided function by returning a new function wrapped in try() Be sure to use Function.prototype.bind if you intend to maintain function context.

brawny.on('log', cb)

where cb is a callback of the form

 function (level, msg, meta) {}

Brawny loggers are also event emitters. Pass a callback cb to receive events any time a log message is sent. cb will be yielded the arguments as above.

brawny.on('log:info', cb) (or 'log:warn', 'log:error', etc.)

where cb is a callback of the form

 function (msg, meta) {}

Pass a callback cb to receive events any time a log message of the level desired is sent. cb will be yielded the arguments as above.

Available transports

Brawny ships with a number of transports:

console

 var console_ = require('brawny/lib/transports/console');
 brawny.use(console_);

Sends the various log level messages to the built-in console.

debug

 var debug = require('brawny/lib/transports/debug');
 brawny.use(debug('app'));

Sends debug-level messages to the fantastic debug module. Messages are nicely colorized both in node and the browser.

http

 var http = require('brawny/lib/transports/http');
 brawny.use(http('http://myapp.com/events'));

Buffers logging messages and sends them in batches as HTTP POSTs to the provided endpoint. Payloads are of the following JSON form:

 {
      "events": [
           {level: "info", msg: "This is a sample message", meta: {"time": 1437981530865}}
           {level: "error", msg: "This is a sample error", meta: {"time": 1437981530869}}
      ]
 }

raven-js (browser-only)

 // This is typical use of raven-js
 Raven.configure('endpoing', ...);

 var brawnyRaven = require('brawny/lib/transports/raven');
 brawny.use(brawnyRaven(window.Raven));

Once you've configured Raven, use it to create a brawny transport. Non-error log levels will be sent using Raven's captureMessage, while calls to brawny.error() will use Raven's captureError, sending a complete stacktrace.

Works great with brawny.try() to automatically capture errors and send them to raven.

Currently browser-only.