BDE 4.14.0 Production release
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Provide a thread-safe observer that logs to a file and to stdout
.
stdout
This component provides a concrete implementation of the ball::Observer
protocol, ball::FileObserver
, for publishing log records to stdout
and, optionally, to a user-specified file. The following inheritance hierarchy diagram shows the classes involved and their methods:
A ball::FileObserver
object processes the log records received through its publish
method by writing them to stdout
and, if so configured, to a user-specified file. The format of published log records is user-configurable for both destinations, stdout
and file (see {Log Record Formatting} below). Although logging to a file is initially disabled following construction, the most common use-case for ball::FileObserver
is to also log to a file, enabled by calling the enableFileLogging
method. In addition, a file observer may be configured to perform automatic log file rotation (see {Log File Rotation} below).
ball::FileObserver
offers several constructor arguments and manipulators that may be used to configure various aspects of a file observer object. These are summarized in the following tables along with the accessors that can be used to query the current state of the configuration. Further details are provided in the following sections and the function-level documentation.
In general, a ball::FileObserver
object can be dynamically configured throughout its lifetime (in particular, before or after being registered with a logger manager). However, note that for ball::FileObserver
, configuration changes that affect how records are logged (e.g., enablePublishInLocalTime
and disablePublishInLocalTime
) impact only those records that are published subsequent to making the configuration change.
By default, the output format of published log records, whether written to stdout
or to a user-specified file, is:
where DATE
and TIME
are of the form DDMonYYYY
and HH:MM:SS.mmm
, respectively (Mon
being the 3-letter abbreviation for the month). For example, a log record will have the following appearance when the default format is in effect (assuming that no user-defined fields are present):
The default format for records published to stdout
(only) can be shortened by calling disableStdoutLoggingPrefix
. This method has the effect of reducing the above example message to the following when output to stdout
:
For additional flexibility, the setLogFormat
method can be called to configure the format of published records. This method takes two arguments: the first argument specifies the format of records logged to a file and the second applies to records that are logged to stdout
. The respective formats are specified using printf
-style (%
-prefixed) conversion specifications. (See ball_recordstringformatter for information on how format specifications are defined and interpreted.) For example, the following statement will force subsequent records to be logged in a format that is almost identical to the default long format except that the timestamp attribute will be written in ISO 8601 format:
Once a customized format is specified for stdout
, calling disableStdoutLoggingPrefix
will switch to the default short format, i.e., "\n%s %f:%l %c %m %u\n". If enableStdoutLoggingPrefix
is subsequently called, the customized format specified in the most recent call to setLogFormat
will be reinstated. Note that the observer emits newline characters at the beginning and at the end of a log record by default, so the user needs to add them explicitly to the format string to preserve this behavior.
Note that in the sample long-form message above the timestamp has millisecond precision (18MAY2005_18:58:12.076
). If microsecond precision is desired instead, consider using either the D
or O
format specification supported by ball_recordstringformatter .
By default, the timestamp attributes of published records are written in UTC time (unless true
is supplied for the optional publishInLocalTime
constructor flag). To write timestamps in local time instead, call the enablePublishInLocalTime
method. Note that the local time offset is calculated using the UTC timestamp of each record. To revert to UTC time, call the disablePublishInLocalTime
method. Whether UTC time or local time is in effect can be queried via isPublishInLocalTimeEnabled
.
The calculation of the local time offset adds some overhead to the publication of each log record. If this overhead is an issue, it can be mitigated by installing a high-performance local-time offset callback for bdlt::CurrentTime
in main
. See bsls_systemtime for the details of installing such a callback and see baltzo_localtimeoffsetutil for an example facility. Note that such callbacks can improve performance for all users of bdlt::CurrentTime
, not just the ball
logger.
The enableFileLogging
method supports the use of %
-escape sequences to specify log filenames. The recognized sequences are as follows:
The date and time elements of the derived filename are based on the time when the log file is created. Furthermore, these elements are based on either UTC time or local time depending on the value returned by isPublishInLocalTimeEnabled
. (See {Log Record Timestamps} for the similarity with the treatment of record timestamps.)
For example, a log filename pattern of "task.log.%Y%M%D_%h%m%s" will yield the filename task.log.20110501_123000
if the file is created on 01-May-2011 at 12:30:00 local time (assuming enablePublishInLocalTime
was called).
A ball::FileObserver
may be configured to perform automatic rotation of log files based on simple file rotation conditions (or rules).
Rotation rules may be established based on the size of the log file (i.e., a "rotation-on-size" rule), and a periodic time interval (i.e., a "rotation-on-time-interval" rule). These rules are independently enabled by the rotateOnSize
and rotateOnTimeInterval
methods, respectively. If both rules are in effect, log file rotation is performed whenever either rule applies.
When a log file is rotated, a new filename is generated using the pattern supplied to enableFileLogging
. If the file having the new name does not exist, the current log file is closed, and the logging continues to the new file.
If the file having the new name already exits, then the behavior of the file rotation is further controlled by the flag set with suppressUniqueFileNameOnRotation
:
suppressUniqueFileNameOnRotation(false)
(default behavior) The current log filename is renamed by appending a timestamp in the form ".%Y%M%D_%h%m%s" where the timestamp indicates when the file being rotated was last opened (the time of either the last file rotation or the last call to enableFileLogging
, whichever is most recent). As with the timestamps of logged records, the timestamps appended to log filenames upon rotation will be in UTC time or local time depending on the value returned by isPublishInLocalTimeEnabled
.suppressUniqueFileNameOnRotation(true)
The logging continues to the current log file, effectively suppressing log filename rotation. This may happen when the log file pattern does not contain %-escape sequences indicating a time period, or the rotation interval is less than the time period encoded by %-escape sequences. In order to rotate log files in this mode, the log file pattern MUST contain %-escape sequences that specify date and (optionally) time. For example, the log filename pattern "app_%Y%M%D.log" will produce a single log file per calendar day (assuming, the rotation on time is enabled and the rotation happens at least once a day).The two tables below illustrate the names of old and new log files when a file rotation occurs. We assume that the log file is rotated on 2011-May-21 at 12:29:59 local time and that the last rotation occurred at 12:30:00 on the previous day. We further assume that enablePublishInLocalTime
was called, so that all date and time elements are rendered in local time.
The first table shows the name change (if any) of the (old) log file being rotated when the flag controlled by suppressUniqueFileNameOnRotation
is set to false
:
Note that upon rotation a timestamp was appended to the name of the rotated file when the log pattern does not contain %-escape sequences indicating a time period ("a.log"), or the rotation period (in our case, one day) is less than the time period encoded in the pattern (in case of "a.log.%Y%M" the period is one month).
The next table shows the rotated name when the flag controlled by suppressUniqueFileNameOnRotation
is set to true
, and (possibly new) name of the (new) log file following rotation:
Note that the original filename is reused when the log pattern does not contain %-escape sequences indicating a time period ("a.log"), or the rotation period (in our case, one day) is less than the time period encoded in the pattern (in case of "a.log.%Y%M" the period is one month).
Also note, that in any cases, when the log pattern includes "%T", or encodes a time period that coincides the rotation period (in case of "a.log.%Y%M%D" the period is one day), then a unique name on each rotation is produced with the (local) time at which file rotation occurred embedded in the filename.
All methods of ball::FileObserver
are thread-safe, and can be called concurrently by multiple threads.
This section illustrates intended use of this component.
First, we create a ball::LoggerManagerConfiguration
object, lmConfig
, and set the logging "pass-through" level – the level at which log records are published to registered observers – to DEBUG
:
Next, create a ball::LoggerManagerScopedGuard
object whose constructor takes the configuration object just created. The guard will initialize the logger manager singleton on creation and destroy the singleton upon destruction. This guarantees that any resources used by the logger manager will be properly released when they are not needed:
Next, we create a ball::FileObserver
object and register it with the ball
logging system;
The default format for outputting log records can be changed by calling the setLogFormat
method. The statement below outputs record timestamps in ISO 8601 format to the log file and in bdlt
-style (default) format to stdout
, where timestamps are output with millisecond precision in both cases:
Note that both of the above format specifications omit user fields (u
) in the output. Also note that, unlike the default, this format does not emit a blank line between consecutive log messages.
Henceforth, all messages that are published by the logging system will be transmitted to the publish
method of observer
. By default, only the messages with a e_WARN
, e_ERROR
, or e_FATAL
severity will be logged to stdout
:
This default can be changed by specifying an optional argument to the ball::FileObserver
constructor or by calling the setStdoutThreshold
method:
The user can log all messages to a specified file and specify rotation rules based on the size of the log file or its lifetime:
Note that in this configuration the user may end up with multiple log files for any given day (because of the rotation-on-size rule). This feature can be disabled dynamically later: