Built in access logs in node.js (express framework)

Question

I was wondering if node.js (or express framework) has any kind of built in access logging like grails has for example?

I have grails application that runs on tomcat and it automatically generates /apache-tomcat-7.0.42/logs/localhost_access_log.2013.10.30.txt file in which are logs about request response like this one:

[30/Oct/2013:00:00:01 +0000] [my-ip-address] [http-bio-8080-exec-18] "GET /my-service/check HTTP/1.0" [200] [took: 1 milis]  

This logs are written automatically by system and I don't have to worry about that.

So what about node.js?

Thanks for any help!

Ivan

Answer 1

edit As of express 4.0.0 this solution is apparently no longer enough. Check out the answer from whirlwin for an updated solution.

You can use app.use(express.logger());

Documented here: http://www.senchalabs.org/connect/logger.html

Answer 2

In newer versions of Express (4.0.0 at the time of writing), the logger is no longer part of Express, so you have to include it as a dependency manually. It is now called morgan.

So, in package.json, add morgan as a dependency:

"dependencies": {
  ...
  "morgan": "*"
  ...
}

And in your Express configuration, add:

app.use(require('morgan')('dev'));

Now logging should work more or less like before. :-)

Answer 3

As of now, most middleware (like logger) is no longer bundled with express and must be installed separately.

Short answer: First, install morgan:

npm install morgan

Then use it for logging:

app = express();
var morgan  = require('morgan')
...
app.use(morgan('combined'))

Documentation is here.

Answer 4

It's not built in but really easy to configure. You can use express-winston and add to the express middleware stack. morgan does not let you log the request body but expressWinston does:

expressWinston.requestWhitelist.push('body');
expressWinston.responseWhitelist.push('body');

Example in coffeescript:

expressWinston.requestWhitelist.push('body')
expressWinston.responseWhitelist.push('body')
app.use(expressWinston.logger({
      transports: [
        new winston.transports.Console({
          json: true,
          colorize: true
        })
      ],
      meta: true, // optional: control whether you want to log the meta data about the request (default to true)
      msg: "HTTP {{req.method}} {{req.url}}", // optional: customize the default logging message. E.g. "{{res.statusCode}} {{req.method}} {{res.responseTime}}ms {{req.url}}"
      expressFormat: true, // Use the default Express/morgan request formatting, with the same colors. Enabling this will override any msg and colorStatus if true. Will only output colors on transports with colorize set to true
      colorStatus: true, // Color the status code, using the Express/morgan color palette (default green, 3XX cyan, 4XX yellow, 5XX red). Will not be recognized if expressFormat is true
      ignoreRoute: function (req, res) { return false; } // optional: allows to skip some log messages based on request and/or response
    }));