Viewing node console log remotely

Question

I have been building my first node app. In testing on my mac, I was able to view the console log output using terminal.

I'm now moving the app to a server but I still want to get a live dump of the console log. Yes, I can get this by SSH'ing into the server - start the app then watch the output. But, say my SSH connection to the server gets disconnected. After re-connecting to the server, how do I go about viewing the terminal output of that process?

One solution I came across was http://console.re - this looks ideal, however it comes with warnings not to use in a production environment. Coupled with the fact that it's public, I'm hesitant to use it.

Does anyone know of an alternative solution similar to console.re?

Thanks

Answer 1

Perhaps screen, tmux, or similar software might work for you.

Answer 2

You could try using a custom function that writes the output to a log file, as well as printing it on screen.

Something like this: (note that this won't accept multiple arguments)

var fs = require('fs');

module.exports = function(text) {
    fs.writeFile('console.log', text, {
        flag: 'a' // append
    }, function(){}); // ignore the response
    console.log(text);
};