electron-timber

Pretty logger for Electron apps

By default, logs from the renderer process don't show up in the terminal. Now they do.

You can use this module directly in both the main and renderer process.

Install

npm install electron-timber

Requires Electron 30 or later.

Usage

Main process:

import {app, BrowserWindow} from 'electron';
import logger from 'electron-timber';

let mainWindow;

(async () => {
	await app.whenReady();

	mainWindow = new BrowserWindow();
	await mainWindow.loadURL(…);

	logger.log('Main log');
	logger.error('Main error');

	const customLogger = logger.create({name: 'custom'});
	customLogger.log('Custom log');
})();

Renderer process:

import logger from 'electron-timber';

logger.log('Renderer log');
logger.error('Renderer error');

API

logger

Logging will be prefixed with either main or renderer depending on where it comes from.

Logs from the renderer process only show up if you have required electron-timber in the main process.

The methods are bound to the class instance, so you can do: const log = logger.log; log('Foo');.

log(…values)

Like console.log.

warn(…values)

Like console.warn.

error(…values)

Like console.error.

time(label)

Like console.time.

timeEnd(label)

Like console.timeEnd.

streamLog(stream)

Log each line in a stream.Readable. For example, child_process.spawn(…).stdout.

streamWarn(stream)

Same as streamLog, but logs using console.warn instead.

streamError(stream)

Same as streamLog, but logs using console.error instead.

create(options?)

Create a custom logger instance.

You should initialize this on module load so prefix padding is consistent with the other loggers.

options

Type: object

name

Type: string

Name of the logger. Used to prefix the log output. Don't use main or renderer.

ignore

Type RegExp

Ignore lines matching the given regex.

logLevel

Type: string

Can be info (log everything), warn (log warnings and errors), or error (log errors only). Defaults to info during development and warn in production.

getDefaults()

Gets the default options (across main and renderer processes).

setDefaults(options?) ^{Main process only}

Sets the default options (across main and renderer processes).

options

Type: object

Same as the options for create().

Toggle loggers

You can show the output of only a subset of the loggers using the environment variable TIMBER_LOGGERS. Here we show the output of the default renderer logger and a custom unicorn logger, but not the default main logger:

TIMBER_LOGGERS=renderer,unicorn electron .

Related

• electron-util - Useful utilities for developing Electron apps and modules
• electron-reloader - Simple auto-reloading for Electron apps during development
• electron-serve - Static file serving for Electron apps
• electron-debug - Adds useful debug features to your Electron app
• electron-context-menu - Context menu for your Electron app
• electron-dl - Simplified file downloads for your Electron app
• electron-unhandled - Catch unhandled errors and promise rejections in your Electron app