winston-axon

This is a message oriented Transport for winston based on axon-secure.

Motivation

If you have a large application with a lot of independent services, you can easy log every service with a unique socket logging endpoint using axon-secure as message-oriented library.

Installation

Install winston-axon as usual:

$ npm install winston-axon

Options

When you add winston-axon to your winston logger, you can provide this options:

• host: (Default: 127.0.0.1) Remote host of the socket logging endpoint
• port: (Default: 3000) Remote port of the socket logging endpoint
• timestamp: (Default false) Boolean flag indicating if we should add a timestamp to the output. If function is specified, its return value will be used instead of timestamps
• secure: (Default: false) set true to encrypt every message
• cipher: (Default: aes256) the cipher used for encryption
• secret: (Default: secret remember to change it!) the shared password for encryption.

Usage

To use this plugin you must have a socket logging endpoint (server) and at least a logger (client).

Server

Create your own server use this simple example:

// dependencies
var axon = require('axon-secure');
var winston = require('winston');

// set socket with encryption
var sock = axon.socket('pull', {
  secure: true,
  cipher: 'aes256',
  secret: 'password'
});
// or set socket without encryption
// var sock = axon.socket('pull');
sock.bind('tcp://127.0.0.1:3000');

// create a customized Console Transport
var consoleTransport = new winston.transports.Console({
  level: 'debug',
  colorize: true,
  timestamp: false
});

// create new Logger
var logger = new (winston.Logger)({
  transports: [
    consoleTransport // add other Transport types if you need
  ],
  exitOnError: true
});

// wait for incoming logs
sock.on('message', function(msg) {
  logger.log(msg.level, msg);
});

logger.info('server started');

Save as server.js and start the server:

$ node server.js

info: server started

Client

Into the client simply add winston-axon as new Transport to your winston instance:

var winston = require('winston');
var Axon = require('winston-axon').Axon;
winston.add(Axon, {
  level: 'debug',
  timestamp: new Date(),
  secure: true,
  cipher: 'aes256',
  secret: 'password'
});
winston.debug({ message: 'Test Object Log Message', error: false });
winston.log('info', 'Test Log Message', { anything: 'This is metadata' });

Save as client.js and start it:

$ node client.js

info: Test Log Message anything=This is metadata

Now in your previous terminal session (that when the server is running) you see this new lines:

debug:  level=debug, message=Debug text only message, timestamp=2014-03-14T14:22:18.536Z
debug:  custom=Test Object Log Message, error=false, level=debug, message=Debug exented message, timestamp=2014-03-14T14:22:18.537Z
info:  anything=This is metadata, level=info, message=Test Log Message, timestamp=2014-03-14T14:22:18.538Z

Note that into the client terminal you see only the info message whereas into the server terminal you see all messages because the server has a customized level of the Console Transport.

For more information please refer to winston and axon-secure documentations.

Run Tests

Like other Transport plugins, all of the winston-axon tests are written in vows, and designed to be run with npm.

$ npm test