winston middleware for express.js
npm install winston express-winston
(supports node >= 0.10)
express-winston provides middlewares for request and error logging of your express.js application. It uses 'whitelists' to select properties from the request and (new in 0.2.x) response objects.
To make use of express-winston, you need to add the following to your application:
In package.json:
{
"dependencies": {
"...": "...",
"winston": "^2.0.0",
"express-winston": "^2.0.0",
"...": "..."
}
}
In server.js (or wherever you need it):
var winston = require('winston'),
expressWinston = require('express-winston');
Use expressWinston.logger(options) to create a middleware to log your HTTP requests.
var router = require('./my-express-router');
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. Enabling this will override any msg if true. Will only output colors with colorize set to true
colorize: false, // Color the text and status code, using the Express/morgan color palette (text: gray, status: default green, 3XX cyan, 4XX yellow, 5XX red).
ignoreRoute: function (req, res) { return false; } // optional: allows to skip some log messages based on request and/or response
}));
app.use(router); // notice how the router goes after the logger. transports: [<WinstonTransport>], // list of all winston transports instances to use.
winstonInstance: <WinstonLogger>, // a winston logger instance. If this is provided the transports option is ignored.
level: String or function(req, res) { return String; }, // log level to use, the default is "info". Assign a function to dynamically set the level based on request and response, or a string to statically set it always at that level. statusLevels must be false for this setting to be used.
msg: String // customize the default logging message. E.g. "{{res.statusCode}} {{req.method}} {{res.responseTime}}ms {{req.url}}", "HTTP {{req.method}} {{req.url}}".
expressFormat: Boolean, // Use the default Express/morgan request formatting. Enabling this will override any msg if true. Will only output colors when colorize set to true
colorize: Boolean, // Color the text and status code, using the Express/morgan color palette (text: gray, status: default green, 3XX cyan, 4XX yellow, 5XX red).
meta: Boolean, // control whether you want to log the meta data about the request (default to true).
baseMeta: Object, // default meta data to be added to log, this will be merged with the meta data.
metaField: String, // if defined, the meta data will be added in this field instead of the meta root object.
statusLevels: Boolean or Object // different HTTP status codes caused log messages to be logged at different levels (info/warn/error), the default is false. Use an object to control the levels various status codes are logged at. Using an object for statusLevels overrides any setting of options.level.
ignoreRoute: function (req, res) { return false; } // A function to determine if logging is skipped, defaults to returning false. Called _before_ any later middleware.
skip: function(req, res) { return false; } // A function to determine if logging is skipped, defaults to returning false. Called _after_ response has already been sent.
requestFilter: function (req, propName) { return req[propName]; } // A function to filter/return request values, defaults to returning all values allowed by whitelist. If the function returns undefined, the key/value will not be included in the meta.
responseFilter: function (res, propName) { return res[propName]; } // A function to filter/return response values, defaults to returning all values allowed by whitelist. If the function returns undefined, the key/value will not be included in the meta.
requestWhitelist: [String] // Array of request properties to log. Overrides global requestWhitelist for this instance
responseWhitelist: [String] // Array of response properties to log. Overrides global responseWhitelist for this instance
bodyWhitelist: [String] // Array of body properties to log. Overrides global bodyWhitelist for this instance
bodyBlacklist: [String] // Array of body properties to omit from logs. Overrides global bodyBlacklist for this instance
ignoredRoutes: [String] // Array of paths to ignore/skip logging. Overrides global ignoredRoutes for this instance
dynamicMeta: function(req, res) { return [Object]; } // Extract additional meta data from request or response (typically req.user data if using passport). meta must be true for this function to be activatedUse expressWinston.errorLogger(options) to create a middleware that log the errors of the pipeline.
var router = require('./my-express-router');
app.use(router); // notice how the router goes first.
app.use(expressWinston.errorLogger({
transports: [
new winston.transports.Console({
json: true,
colorize: true
})
]
}));The logger needs to be added AFTER the express router(app.router)) and BEFORE any of your custom error handlers(express.handler). Since express-winston will just log the errors and not handle them, you can still use your custom error handler like express.handler, just be sure to put the logger before any of your handlers.
transports: [<WinstonTransport>], // list of all winston transports instances to use.
winstonInstance: <WinstonLogger>, // a winston logger instance. If this is provided the transports option is ignored
msg: String // customize the default logging message. E.g. "{{err.message}} {{res.statusCode}} {{req.method}}".
baseMeta: Object, // default meta data to be added to log, this will be merged with the error data.
metaField: String, // if defined, the meta data will be added in this field instead of the meta root object.
requestFilter: function (req, propName) { return req[propName]; } // A function to filter/return request values, defaults to returning all values allowed by whitelist. If the function returns undefined, the key/value will not be included in the meta.
requestWhitelist: [String] // Array of request properties to log. Overrides global requestWhitelist for this instance
level: String or function(req, res, err) { return String; }// custom log level for errors (default is 'error'). Assign a function to dynamically set the log level based on request, response, and the exact error.
dynamicMeta: function(req, res, err) { return [Object]; } // Extract additional meta data from request or response (typically req.user data if using passport). meta must be true for this function to be activatedTo use winston's existing transports, set transports to the values (as in key-value) of the winston.default.transports object. This may be done, for example, by using underscorejs: transports: _.values(winston.default.transports).
Alternatively, if you're using a winston logger instance elsewhere and have already set up levels and transports, pass the instance into expressWinston with the winstonInstance option. The transports option is then ignored.
var express = require('express');
var expressWinston = require('express-winston');
var winston = require('winston'); // for transports.Console
var app = module.exports = express();
app.use(express.bodyParser());
app.use(express.methodOverride());
// Let's make our express `Router` first.
var router = express.Router();
router.get('/error', function(req, res, next) {
// here we cause an error in the pipeline so we see express-winston in action.
return next(new Error("This is an error and it should be logged to the console"));
});
app.get('/', function(req, res, next) {
res.write('This is a normal request, it should be logged to the console too');
res.end();
});
// express-winston logger makes sense BEFORE the router.
app.use(expressWinston.logger({
transports: [
new winston.transports.Console({
json: true,
colorize: true
})
]
}));
// Now we can tell the app to use our routing code:
app.use(router);
// express-winston errorLogger makes sense AFTER the router.
app.use(expressWinston.errorLogger({
transports: [
new winston.transports.Console({
json: true,
colorize: true
})
]
}));
// Optionally you can include your custom error handler after the logging.
app.use(express.errorLogger({
dumpExceptions: true,
showStack: true
}));
app.listen(3000, function(){
console.log("express-winston demo listening on port %d in %s mode", this.address().port, app.settings.env);
});Browse / to see a regular HTTP logging like this:
{
"req": {
"httpVersion": "1.1",
"headers": {
"host": "localhost:3000",
"connection": "keep-alive",
"accept": "*/*",
"user-agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_7_4) AppleWebKit/536.11 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/20.0.1132.57 Safari/536.11",
"accept-encoding": "gzip,deflate,sdch",
"accept-language": "en-US,en;q=0.8,es-419;q=0.6,es;q=0.4",
"accept-charset": "ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3",
"cookie": "connect.sid=nGspCCSzH1qxwNTWYAoexI23.seE%2B6Whmcwd"
},
"url": "/",
"method": "GET",
"originalUrl": "/",
"query": {}
},
"res": {
"statusCode": 200
},
"responseTime" : 12,
"level": "info",
"message": "HTTP GET /favicon.ico"
}
Browse /error will show you how express-winston handles and logs the errors in the express pipeline like this:
{
"date": "Thu Jul 19 2012 23:39:44 GMT-0500 (COT)",
"process": {
"pid": 35719,
"uid": 501,
"gid": 20,
"cwd": "/Users/thepumpkin/Projects/testExpressWinston",
"execPath": "/usr/local/bin/node",
"version": "v0.6.18",
"argv": [
"node",
"/Users/thepumpkin/Projects/testExpressWinston/app.js"
],
"memoryUsage": {
"rss": 14749696,
"heapTotal": 7033664,
"heapUsed": 5213280
}
},
"os": {
"loadavg": [
1.95068359375,
1.5166015625,
1.38671875
],
"uptime": 498086
},
"trace": [
...,
{
"column": 3,
"file": "Object].log (/Users/thepumpkin/Projects/testExpressWinston/node_modules/winston/lib/winston/transports/console.js",
"function": "[object",
"line": 87,
"method": null,
"native": false
}
],
"stack": [
"Error: This is an error and it should be logged to the console",
" at /Users/thepumpkin/Projects/testExpressWinston/app.js:39:15",
" at callbacks (/Users/thepumpkin/Projects/testExpressWinston/node_modules/express/lib/router/index.js:272:11)",
" at param (/Users/thepumpkin/Projects/testExpressWinston/node_modules/express/lib/router/index.js:246:11)",
" at pass (/Users/thepumpkin/Projects/testExpressWinston/node_modules/express/lib/router/index.js:253:5)",
" at Router._dispatch (/Users/thepumpkin/Projects/testExpressWinston/node_modules/express/lib/router/index.js:280:4)",
" at Object.handle (/Users/thepumpkin/Projects/testExpressWinston/node_modules/express/lib/router/index.js:45:10)",
" at next (/Users/thepumpkin/Projects/testExpressWinston/node_modules/express/node_modules/connect/lib/http.js:204:15)",
" at done (/Users/thepumpkin/Dropbox/Projects/express-winston/index.js:91:14)",
" at /Users/thepumpkin/Dropbox/Projects/express-winston/node_modules/async/lib/async.js:94:25",
" at [object Object].log (/Users/thepumpkin/Projects/testExpressWinston/node_modules/winston/lib/winston/transports/console.js:87:3)"
],
"req": {
"httpVersion": "1.1",
"headers": {
"host": "localhost:3000",
"connection": "keep-alive",
"cache-control": "max-age=0",
"user-agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_7_4) AppleWebKit/536.11 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/20.0.1132.57 Safari/536.11",
"accept": "text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8",
"accept-encoding": "gzip,deflate,sdch",
"accept-language": "en-US,en;q=0.8,es-419;q=0.6,es;q=0.4",
"accept-charset": "ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3",
"cookie": "connect.sid=nGspCCSzH1qxwNTWYAoexI23.seE%2B6WhmcwdzFEjqhMDuIIl3mAUY7dT4vn%2BkWvRPhZc"
},
"url": "/error",
"method": "GET",
"originalUrl": "/error",
"query": {}
},
"level": "error",
"message": "middlewareError"
}
Express-winston exposes three whitelists that control which properties of the request, body, and response are logged:
requestWhitelistbodyWhitelist,bodyBlacklistresponseWhitelist
For example, requestWhitelist defaults to:
['url', 'headers', 'method', 'httpVersion', 'originalUrl', 'query'];
Only those properties of the request object will be logged. Set or modify the whitelist as necessary.
For example, to include the session property (the session data), add the following during logger setup:
expressWinston.requestWhitelist.push('session');
The blacklisting excludes certain properties and keeps all others. If both bodyWhitelist and bodyBlacklist are set
the properties excluded by the blacklist are not included even if they are listed in the whitelist!
Example:
expressWinston.bodyBlacklist.push('secretid', 'secretproperty');
Note that you can log the whole request and/or response body:
expressWinston.requestWhitelist.push('body');
expressWinston.responseWhitelist.push('body');
New in version 0.2.x is the ability to add whitelist elements in a route. express-winston adds a _routeWhitelists object to the request, containing .body, .req and .res` properties, to which you can set an array of 'whitelist' parameters to include in the log, specific to the route in question:
router.post('/user/register', function(req, res, next) {
req._routeWhitelists.body = ['username', 'email', 'age']; // But not 'password' or 'confirm-password' or 'top-secret'
req._routeWhitelists.res = ['_headers'];
});Post to /user/register would give you something like the following:
{
"req": {
"httpVersion": "1.1",
"headers": {
"host": "localhost:3000",
"connection": "keep-alive",
"accept": "*/*",
"user-agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_7_4) AppleWebKit/536.11 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/20.0.1132.57 Safari/536.11",
"accept-encoding": "gzip,deflate,sdch",
"accept-language": "en-US,en;q=0.8,es-419;q=0.6,es;q=0.4",
"accept-charset": "ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3",
"cookie": "connect.sid=nGspCCSzH1qxwNTWYAoexI23.seE%2B6Whmcwd"
},
"url": "/",
"method": "GET",
"originalUrl": "/",
"query": {},
"body": {
"username": "foo",
"email": "foo@bar.com",
"age": "72"
}
},
"res": {
"statusCode": 200
},
"responseTime" : 12,
"level": "info",
"message": "HTTP GET /favicon.ico"
}
Blacklisting supports only the body property.
router.post('/user/register', function(req, res, next) {
req._routeWhitelists.body = ['username', 'email', 'age']; // But not 'password' or 'confirm-password' or 'top-secret'
req._routeBlacklists.body = ['username', 'password', 'confirm-password', 'top-secret'];
req._routeWhitelists.res = ['_headers'];
});If both req._bodyWhitelist.body and req._bodyBlacklist.body are set the result will be the white listed properties
excluding any black listed ones. In the above example, only 'email' and 'age' would be included.
If you set statusLevels to true express-winston will log sub 400 responses at info level, sub 500 responses as warnings and 500+ responses as errors. To change these levels specify an object as follows
"statusLevels": {
"success": "debug",
"warn": "debug",
"error": "info"
}If you set statusLevels to false and assign a function to level, you can customize the log level for any scenario.
statusLevels: false // default value
level: function (req, res) {
var level = "";
if (res.statusCode >= 100) { level = "info"; }
if (res.statusCode >= 400) { level = "warn"; }
if (res.statusCode >= 500) { level = "error"; }
// Ops is worried about hacking attempts so make Unauthorized and Forbidden critical
if (res.statusCode == 401 || res.statusCode == 403) { level = "critical"; }
// No one should be using the old path, so always warn for those
if (req.path === "/v1" && level === "info") { level = "warn"; }
return level;
}If you set dynamicMeta function you can extract additional meta data fields from request or response objects. The function can be used to either select relevant elements in request or response body without logging them as a whole or to extract runtime data like the user making the request. The example below logs the user name and role as assigned by the passport authentication middleware.
meta: true,
dynamicMeta: function(req, res) {
return {
user: req.user ? req.user.username : null,
role: req.user ? req.user.role : null,
...
}
}Run the basic Mocha tests:
npm test
Run the Travis-CI tests (which will fail with < 100% coverage):
npm run test-travis
Generate the coverage.html coverage report:
npm run test-coverage
If you ran into any problems, please use the project Issues section to search or post any bug.
- Johan Hernandez (https://github.com/bithavoc)
- Lars Jacob (https://github.com/jaclar)
- Jonathan Lomas (https://github.com/floatingLomas)
- Ross Brandes (https://github.com/rosston)
Also see AUTHORS file, add yourself if you are missing.
Copyright (c) 2012-2014 Bithavoc.io and Contributors - http://bithavoc.io
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The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
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