README

petit

Tinyiest possible logger. Node.js / IO.js.

Install

npm install petit

Usage

var logger = require('petit').get();
logger.info('Hello there.');

Scoping

If you have a moderately complex app with multiple modules or files, you can use petit's .scope() method which will prepend a string to the log output, showing where that output originated from.

logger.info('This is shown without any prefix.');

var scoped = logger.scope('component');
scoped.info('This will be shown with a "component" prefix before it.');

Now, Given that petit holds a shared reference for the logger initialized by .get(), you can have different scoped loggers that output to the same stream from different parts in your app. For example:

// main.js
var logger = require('petit').get();

// other.js
var logger = require('petit').get().scope('other');

Exports

petit.get(options)

Return the last initialized logger instance. If none exists, initializes a new one, and sets that one as the current.

var logger = require('petit').get(options);

This function is also aliased as the module's root exports, meaning you can call it like this:

var logger = require('petit')(options);

petit.new(options)

Initializes a new logger instance with the given set of options, whether a previous logger exists or not. This provides a way to have multiple logger instances, optionally writing to different streams.

var petit         = require('petit'),
    stdout_logger = petit.new(),
    stream_logger = petit.new({ stream: someWritableStream }),
    file_logger   = petit.new({ file: '/tmp/output.log' });

petit.scope(string)

Shortcut for calling .scope() over the logger returned by .get().

var logger = require('petit').scope('something');

Options

level: Log level. Options are: 'debug', 'info', 'notice', 'warn', 'error' and 'critical'. Default is info.
show_date: If false, hides the date from the log output. Defauts to true.
stream: Uses stream as the output stream where the log is written to. Defaults to process.stdout.
file: Creates a writeStream on file and uses it as the output stream. Optional.

Example

// index.js

var logger = require('petit')(),
    engine = require('./engine');

exports.boot = function() {
  logger.debug('Starting the engines...');
  engine.start(function() {
    logger.info('Engine started!');
  });
}

// engine.js

var logger = require('petit').scope('engine');

exports.start = function(cb) {
  if (cb == null)
    return logger.warn('No callback passed!');

  // (magic happens)
  cb();
}

Small print

Written by Tomás Pollak. (c) Fork, Ltd. MIT License.

Usage no npm install needed!