winston-papertrail

A Papertrail transport for winston.

Installation

Installing npm (node package manager)

  $ curl http://npmjs.org/install.sh | sh

Installing winston-papertrail

  $ npm install winston
  $ npm install winston-papertrail

There are a few required options for logging to Papertrail:

• host: FQDN or IP Address of the Papertrail Service Endpoint
• port: The Endpoint TCP Port

Usage

  var winston = require('winston');

  //
  // Requiring `winston-papertrail` will expose
  // `winston.transports.Papertrail`
  //
  require('winston-papertrail').Papertrail;

  var winstonPapertrail = new winston.transports.Papertrail({
	host: 'logs.papertrailapp.com',
	port: 12345
  })
  
  winstonPapertrail.on('error', function(err) {
	// Handle, report, or silently ignore connection errors and failures
  });

  var logger = new winston.Logger({
	transports: [winstonPapertrail]
  });

  logger.info('this is my message');

There are a number of optional settings:

• disableTls - set to true to disable TLS on your transport. Defaults to false
• level - The log level to use for this transport, defaults to info
• levels - A custom mapping of log levels strings to severity levels, defaults to the mapping of npm levels to RFC5424 severities
• hostname - The hostname for your transport, defaults to os.hostname()
• program - The program for your transport, defaults to default
• facility - The syslog facility for this transport, defaults to daemon
• logFormat - A function to format your log message before sending, see below
• colorize - Enable colors in logs, defaults to false
• inlineMeta - Inline multi-line messages, defaults to false
• handleExceptions - Tell this Transport to handle exceptions, defaults to false
• flushOnClose - Flush any queued logs prior to closing/exiting
• depth - max depth for objects dumped by NodeJS util.inspect

There are also a number of settings for connection failure and retry behavior

• attemptsBeforeDecay - How many retries should be attempted before backing off, defaults to 5
• maximumAttempts - How many retries before disabling buffering, defaults to 25
• connectionDelay - How long between backoff in milliseconds, defaults to 1000
• maxDelayBetweenReconnection - The maximum backoff in milliseconds, defaults to 60000
• maxBufferSize - The maximum size of the retry buffer, in bytes, defaults to 1048576

Advanced Usage

For more some advanced logging, you can take advantage of custom formatting for Papertrail:

  var winston = require('winston');

  //
  // Requiring `winston-papertrail` will expose
  // `winston.transports.Papertrail`
  //
  require('winston-papertrail').Papertrail;

  var logger = new winston.Logger({
  	transports: [
  		new winston.transports.Papertrail({
  			host: 'logs.papertrailapp.com',
  			port: 12345,
  			logFormat: function(level, message) {
  			    return '<<<' + level + '>>> ' + message;
  			}
  		})
  	]
  });

  logger.info('this is my message');

Transport Events

The Papertrail transport is also capable of emitting events for error and connect so you can log to other transports:

var winston = require('winston'),
	Papertrail = require('winston-papertrail').Papertrail;

var logger,
	consoleLogger = new winston.transports.Console({
		level: 'debug',
		timestamp: function() {
			return new Date().toString();
		},
		colorize: true
	}),
	ptTransport = new Papertrail({
		host: 'logs.papertrailapp.com',
		port: 12345,
		hostname: 'web-01',
		level: 'debug',
		logFormat: function(level, message) {
			return '[' + level + '] ' + message;
		}
	});

ptTransport.on('error', function(err) {
	logger && logger.error(err);
});

ptTransport.on('connect', function(message) {
	logger && logger.info(message);
});

var logger = new winston.Logger({
	levels: {
		debug: 0,
		info: 1,
		warn: 2,
		error: 3
	},
	transports: [
		ptTransport,
		consoleLogger
	]
});

logger.info('this is my message ' + new Date().getTime());

Colorization

The winston-papertrail transport supports colorization with winston. Currently, the ANSI codes used for escape sequences are part of the search index, so please be advised when using colorization.

var winston = require('winston'),
    Papertrail = require('winston-papertrail').Papertrail;

var logger = new winston.Logger({
    transports: [
        new Papertrail({
            host: 'logs.papertrailapp.com',
            port: 12345, // your port here
            colorize: true
        })
    ]
});

logger.info('Hello from colorized winston', logger);

Closing the transport

As of v0.1.3 winston-papertrail transport supports closing the transport (and the underlying TLS connection) via the Winston.Transport close method. Thus, you can enable scenarios where your transport automatically closes when you close the winston logger.

var winston = require('winston'),
    Papertrail = require('winston-papertrail').Papertrail;

pt = new Papertrail({
    host: 'logs.papertrailapp.com',
    port: 12345 // your port here
});

var logger = new winston.Logger({
    transports: [ pt ]
});

pt.on('connect', function () {
    logger.info('logging before I close');
    logger.close(); // this closes the underlying connection in the Papertrail transport
});

Author: Ken Perkins