How to connect to socket.io, built into the logging system, to create your own messages?

Question

socket.io seems to have basically a reasonable logging system for all of its internal elements. How can I get this log object so that I can generate my own log messages at the appropriate levels? It seems to me that my console.log() messages are not tied to the mark, are not aligned and ugly next to socket.io messages. I did a bunch of spelunking in socket.io code, and at the moment I'm not good enough at node to understand what the object hierarchies look like, to find out how to get to the object that I want from my code.

In the long run, I probably will need a more reliable system registration module (with the ability to enter files, automatically rotate, manage levels for each module, custom log levels, etc.). Winston looks reasonable, but can I use socket.io to use it? It would be nice to have everything in one place.

Answer 1

When using socket.io, I was able to connect to an existing registration module this way:

 var express = require('express'), app = module.exports = express.createServer(), //just creating 'app' for io io = require('socket.io').listen(app), logger = io.log, // access the existing logger setup in socket.io util = require('util'); logger.info(util.format("Express server listening on port %d in %s mode", 8003, app.settings.env)); 

Logging is also very simple:

 io.configure('production', function(){ io.set('log level', 1); } 

Answer 2

Have you studied using logger middleware from Connect ? It looks like someone has already created a library for what you want to call socket.IO-connect . I use something like this in my Express program:

 var connect = require('connect'); module.exports = connect.createServer( connect.logger({ format: ':response-time :method :url' }), connect.static(__dirname + '/public) );