debug vs winston vs pino vs loglevel vs log4js vs morgan vs bunyan vs loggly-jslogger
Node.js Logging Libraries Comparison
1 Year
debugwinstonpinologlevellog4jsmorganbunyanloggly-jsloggerSimilar Packages:
What's Node.js Logging Libraries?

Logging libraries in Node.js provide developers with tools to record application behavior, errors, and other significant events. These libraries help in debugging, monitoring, and maintaining applications by offering various logging levels, formats, and transports to manage log output effectively. They are essential for understanding application flow and diagnosing issues in production environments, contributing to improved application reliability and performance.

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debug319,741,58311,21742.8 kB813 months agoMIT
winston13,252,23123,316271 kB5104 months agoMIT
pino10,465,09514,959746 kB1342 months agoMIT
loglevel9,400,8452,65386.2 kB176 months agoMIT
log4js5,516,3275,818160 kB942 years agoApache-2.0
morgan5,188,4588,007-215 years agoMIT
bunyan1,915,5657,195-2924 years agoMIT
loggly-jslogger14,8357943.6 kB17-MIT
Feature Comparison: debug vs winston vs pino vs loglevel vs log4js vs morgan vs bunyan vs loggly-jslogger

Logging Format

  • debug:

    Debug logs are output as plain text, allowing for easy readability during development. It does not enforce a specific format, giving developers flexibility in how they log messages.

  • winston:

    Winston allows for customizable log formats, supporting both JSON and text outputs. This flexibility makes it suitable for various logging scenarios, from simple console logs to complex file logging.

  • pino:

    Pino generates logs in a highly efficient JSON format that is optimized for performance. It minimizes overhead while providing structured logs that can be easily consumed by log processors.

  • loglevel:

    Loglevel provides a simple text-based logging format, which is easy to read and understand. It supports different log levels for better categorization of log messages.

  • log4js:

    Log4js supports various logging formats, including JSON and plain text, allowing developers to customize log output to meet their needs. It is similar to Log4j in its configuration options.

  • morgan:

    Morgan formats logs for HTTP requests in a customizable way, allowing developers to choose predefined formats or create their own for better readability and analysis.

  • bunyan:

    Bunyan outputs logs in a structured JSON format, which is easy to parse and analyze programmatically. This format is particularly useful for log aggregation and monitoring tools.

  • loggly-jslogger:

    Loggly-jslogger sends logs in a format compatible with Loggly, ensuring that logs are structured for easy searching and filtering within the Loggly interface.

Performance

  • debug:

    Debug is lightweight and has minimal performance impact, making it ideal for development environments. However, it should be disabled in production to avoid unnecessary logging overhead.

  • winston:

    Winston offers a balance between flexibility and performance, but its performance can be affected by the number of transports and formats used. It is suitable for applications that need detailed logging.

  • pino:

    Pino is one of the fastest logging libraries available, designed for high throughput and low latency. It is ideal for performance-critical applications that require efficient logging.

  • loglevel:

    Loglevel is lightweight and performs well, making it suitable for both client-side and server-side applications. It has minimal impact on application performance.

  • log4js:

    Log4js can introduce some performance overhead due to its flexibility and configuration options. It is suitable for applications where logging complexity is required, but performance should be monitored.

  • morgan:

    Morgan is efficient for logging HTTP requests, but its performance can vary based on the logging format chosen. It is generally suitable for most applications without significant overhead.

  • bunyan:

    Bunyan is designed for performance, but its structured logging can introduce some overhead compared to simpler libraries. It is optimized for production use, balancing performance with log structure.

  • loggly-jslogger:

    Loggly-jslogger is efficient for sending logs to Loggly, but network latency can affect performance. It is best used in applications where centralized logging is a priority.

Transport Options

  • debug:

    Debug does not have built-in transport options; it simply logs to the console. For more complex logging needs, additional integration with other libraries may be necessary.

  • winston:

    Winston excels in transport options, supporting multiple destinations like files, databases, and external services. This makes it highly versatile for applications with complex logging needs.

  • pino:

    Pino supports multiple transports through external libraries, allowing logs to be sent to various destinations like files, databases, or remote logging services. This extensibility is beneficial for diverse logging setups.

  • loglevel:

    Loglevel does not have built-in transport options; it primarily logs to the console. Developers can implement custom transports if needed, but it requires additional setup.

  • log4js:

    Log4js provides a wide range of appenders (transports), including file, console, and remote logging options. This makes it suitable for applications with diverse logging requirements.

  • morgan:

    Morgan is an HTTP request logger middleware that outputs logs to the console or a file. It can be easily integrated with other logging libraries for more complex transport needs.

  • bunyan:

    Bunyan supports multiple output streams, allowing logs to be sent to files, stdout, or external services. This flexibility is useful for integrating with various logging systems.

  • loggly-jslogger:

    Loggly-jslogger is specifically designed to send logs to Loggly, providing a direct transport option for centralized logging. It simplifies integration with Loggly's services.

Ease of Use

  • debug:

    Debug is extremely easy to use, requiring minimal setup. Developers can enable logging for specific modules with just an environment variable, making it very user-friendly during development.

  • winston:

    Winston offers a flexible API that is easy to use, but its extensive features may require some learning for new users. It is suitable for developers who need advanced logging capabilities.

  • pino:

    Pino is designed for ease of use with a simple API, making it straightforward to implement in applications. Its performance-focused design does not compromise usability.

  • loglevel:

    Loglevel is very easy to use, with a simple API for logging messages at different levels. It is suitable for quick integration into projects without complex setup.

  • log4js:

    Log4js has a familiar configuration style for those coming from Java's Log4j, making it easy to adopt. However, its flexibility may require more initial setup compared to simpler libraries.

  • morgan:

    Morgan is easy to integrate as middleware in Express applications, providing automatic logging of HTTP requests with minimal configuration required.

  • bunyan:

    Bunyan is straightforward to set up and use, with a clear API for logging messages. However, its structured format may require additional tools for log analysis.

  • loggly-jslogger:

    Loggly-jslogger is easy to integrate with Loggly, requiring minimal configuration to start sending logs. It is user-friendly for developers looking to centralize logging quickly.

Community and Support

  • debug:

    Debug is a popular library with a large user base, ensuring good community support and resources available for troubleshooting and best practices.

  • winston:

    Winston has a large and active community, with extensive documentation and resources available. It is one of the most popular logging libraries in the Node.js ecosystem.

  • pino:

    Pino has an active community and is well-documented, providing ample resources for developers. Its performance focus has garnered a strong following among Node.js developers.

  • loglevel:

    Loglevel has a growing community and is documented well, providing sufficient resources for developers looking to implement it in their projects.

  • log4js:

    Log4js has a solid community, especially among developers familiar with Log4j. Documentation and resources are available, but it may not be as widely used as some other libraries.

  • morgan:

    Morgan is widely used in the Express community, ensuring good support and resources for integration and usage. Its popularity makes it easy to find help.

  • bunyan:

    Bunyan has a supportive community and is well-documented, making it easier for developers to find help and resources. It is widely used in production environments.

  • loggly-jslogger:

    Loggly-jslogger benefits from Loggly's support and documentation, making it easy to find resources for integration and troubleshooting.

How to Choose: debug vs winston vs pino vs loglevel vs log4js vs morgan vs bunyan vs loggly-jslogger
  • debug:

    Select Debug for lightweight logging during development. It allows you to enable or disable logging dynamically using environment variables, making it perfect for debugging specific modules without cluttering the output.

  • winston:

    Choose Winston for a versatile logging library that supports multiple transports and formats. It is suitable for applications that require detailed logging capabilities and flexibility in log management.

  • pino:

    Opt for Pino for high-performance logging with a low overhead. It is designed for speed and efficiency, making it suitable for high-throughput applications that require minimal impact on performance.

  • loglevel:

    Choose Loglevel for a simple, lightweight logging solution that supports different log levels and can be easily integrated into both client-side and server-side applications. It's great for projects that need minimal setup.

  • log4js:

    Opt for Log4js if you are familiar with the Log4j framework from Java and want similar functionality in Node.js. It supports multiple appenders and layouts, making it suitable for complex logging requirements.

  • morgan:

    Select Morgan if you need an HTTP request logger middleware for Node.js applications. It is particularly useful for logging incoming requests in Express applications, providing insights into request patterns and performance.

  • bunyan:

    Choose Bunyan if you need a structured JSON logging format that is easy to parse and analyze, especially in production environments. It is ideal for applications that require a consistent logging structure and integration with log management systems.

  • loggly-jslogger:

    Use Loggly-jslogger if you want to send logs directly to Loggly, a cloud-based log management service. This is ideal for applications that require centralized logging and analysis without managing local log files.

README for debug

debug

OpenCollective OpenCollective

A tiny JavaScript debugging utility modelled after Node.js core's debugging technique. Works in Node.js and web browsers.

Installation

$ npm install debug

Usage

debug exposes a function; simply pass this function the name of your module, and it will return a decorated version of console.error for you to pass debug statements to. This will allow you to toggle the debug output for different parts of your module as well as the module as a whole.

Example app.js:

var debug = require('debug')('http')
  , http = require('http')
  , name = 'My App';

// fake app

debug('booting %o', name);

http.createServer(function(req, res){
  debug(req.method + ' ' + req.url);
  res.end('hello\n');
}).listen(3000, function(){
  debug('listening');
});

// fake worker of some kind

require('./worker');

Example worker.js:

var a = require('debug')('worker:a')
  , b = require('debug')('worker:b');

function work() {
  a('doing lots of uninteresting work');
  setTimeout(work, Math.random() * 1000);
}

work();

function workb() {
  b('doing some work');
  setTimeout(workb, Math.random() * 2000);
}

workb();

The DEBUG environment variable is then used to enable these based on space or comma-delimited names.

Here are some examples:

screen shot 2017-08-08 at 12 53 04 pm screen shot 2017-08-08 at 12 53 38 pm screen shot 2017-08-08 at 12 53 25 pm

Windows command prompt notes

CMD

On Windows the environment variable is set using the set command.

set DEBUG=*,-not_this

Example:

set DEBUG=* & node app.js
PowerShell (VS Code default)

PowerShell uses different syntax to set environment variables.

$env:DEBUG = "*,-not_this"

Example:

$env:DEBUG='app';node app.js

Then, run the program to be debugged as usual.

npm script example:

  "windowsDebug": "@powershell -Command $env:DEBUG='*';node app.js",

Namespace Colors

Every debug instance has a color generated for it based on its namespace name. This helps when visually parsing the debug output to identify which debug instance a debug line belongs to.

Node.js

In Node.js, colors are enabled when stderr is a TTY. You also should install the supports-color module alongside debug, otherwise debug will only use a small handful of basic colors.

Web Browser

Colors are also enabled on "Web Inspectors" that understand the %c formatting option. These are WebKit web inspectors, Firefox (since version 31) and the Firebug plugin for Firefox (any version).

Millisecond diff

When actively developing an application it can be useful to see when the time spent between one debug() call and the next. Suppose for example you invoke debug() before requesting a resource, and after as well, the "+NNNms" will show you how much time was spent between calls.

When stdout is not a TTY, Date#toISOString() is used, making it more useful for logging the debug information as shown below:

Conventions

If you're using this in one or more of your libraries, you should use the name of your library so that developers may toggle debugging as desired without guessing names. If you have more than one debuggers you should prefix them with your library name and use ":" to separate features. For example "bodyParser" from Connect would then be "connect:bodyParser". If you append a "*" to the end of your name, it will always be enabled regardless of the setting of the DEBUG environment variable. You can then use it for normal output as well as debug output.

Wildcards

The * character may be used as a wildcard. Suppose for example your library has debuggers named "connect:bodyParser", "connect:compress", "connect:session", instead of listing all three with DEBUG=connect:bodyParser,connect:compress,connect:session, you may simply do DEBUG=connect:*, or to run everything using this module simply use DEBUG=*.

You can also exclude specific debuggers by prefixing them with a "-" character. For example, DEBUG=*,-connect:* would include all debuggers except those starting with "connect:".

Environment Variables

When running through Node.js, you can set a few environment variables that will change the behavior of the debug logging:

| Name | Purpose | |-----------|-------------------------------------------------| | DEBUG | Enables/disables specific debugging namespaces. | | DEBUG_HIDE_DATE | Hide date from debug output (non-TTY). | | DEBUG_COLORS| Whether or not to use colors in the debug output. | | DEBUG_DEPTH | Object inspection depth. | | DEBUG_SHOW_HIDDEN | Shows hidden properties on inspected objects. |

Note: The environment variables beginning with DEBUG_ end up being converted into an Options object that gets used with %o/%O formatters. See the Node.js documentation for util.inspect() for the complete list.

Formatters

Debug uses printf-style formatting. Below are the officially supported formatters:

| Formatter | Representation | |-----------|----------------| | %O | Pretty-print an Object on multiple lines. | | %o | Pretty-print an Object all on a single line. | | %s | String. | | %d | Number (both integer and float). | | %j | JSON. Replaced with the string '[Circular]' if the argument contains circular references. | | %% | Single percent sign ('%'). This does not consume an argument. |

Custom formatters

You can add custom formatters by extending the debug.formatters object. For example, if you wanted to add support for rendering a Buffer as hex with %h, you could do something like:

const createDebug = require('debug')
createDebug.formatters.h = (v) => {
  return v.toString('hex')
}

// …elsewhere
const debug = createDebug('foo')
debug('this is hex: %h', new Buffer('hello world'))
//   foo this is hex: 68656c6c6f20776f726c6421 +0ms

Browser Support

You can build a browser-ready script using browserify, or just use the browserify-as-a-service build, if you don't want to build it yourself.

Debug's enable state is currently persisted by localStorage. Consider the situation shown below where you have worker:a and worker:b, and wish to debug both. You can enable this using localStorage.debug:

localStorage.debug = 'worker:*'

And then refresh the page.

a = debug('worker:a');
b = debug('worker:b');

setInterval(function(){
  a('doing some work');
}, 1000);

setInterval(function(){
  b('doing some work');
}, 1200);

In Chromium-based web browsers (e.g. Brave, Chrome, and Electron), the JavaScript console will—by default—only show messages logged by debug if the "Verbose" log level is enabled.

Output streams

By default debug will log to stderr, however this can be configured per-namespace by overriding the log method:

Example stdout.js:

var debug = require('debug');
var error = debug('app:error');

// by default stderr is used
error('goes to stderr!');

var log = debug('app:log');
// set this namespace to log via console.log
log.log = console.log.bind(console); // don't forget to bind to console!
log('goes to stdout');
error('still goes to stderr!');

// set all output to go via console.info
// overrides all per-namespace log settings
debug.log = console.info.bind(console);
error('now goes to stdout via console.info');
log('still goes to stdout, but via console.info now');

Extend

You can simply extend debugger

const log = require('debug')('auth');

//creates new debug instance with extended namespace
const logSign = log.extend('sign');
const logLogin = log.extend('login');

log('hello'); // auth hello
logSign('hello'); //auth:sign hello
logLogin('hello'); //auth:login hello

Set dynamically

You can also enable debug dynamically by calling the enable() method :

let debug = require('debug');

console.log(1, debug.enabled('test'));

debug.enable('test');
console.log(2, debug.enabled('test'));

debug.disable();
console.log(3, debug.enabled('test'));

print :

1 false
2 true
3 false

Usage :
enable(namespaces)
namespaces can include modes separated by a colon and wildcards.

Note that calling enable() completely overrides previously set DEBUG variable :

$ DEBUG=foo node -e 'var dbg = require("debug"); dbg.enable("bar"); console.log(dbg.enabled("foo"))'
=> false

disable()

Will disable all namespaces. The functions returns the namespaces currently enabled (and skipped). This can be useful if you want to disable debugging temporarily without knowing what was enabled to begin with.

For example:

let debug = require('debug');
debug.enable('foo:*,-foo:bar');
let namespaces = debug.disable();
debug.enable(namespaces);

Note: There is no guarantee that the string will be identical to the initial enable string, but semantically they will be identical.

Checking whether a debug target is enabled

After you've created a debug instance, you can determine whether or not it is enabled by checking the enabled property:

const debug = require('debug')('http');

if (debug.enabled) {
  // do stuff...
}

You can also manually toggle this property to force the debug instance to be enabled or disabled.

Usage in child processes

Due to the way debug detects if the output is a TTY or not, colors are not shown in child processes when stderr is piped. A solution is to pass the DEBUG_COLORS=1 environment variable to the child process.
For example:

worker = fork(WORKER_WRAP_PATH, [workerPath], {
  stdio: [
    /* stdin: */ 0,
    /* stdout: */ 'pipe',
    /* stderr: */ 'pipe',
    'ipc',
  ],
  env: Object.assign({}, process.env, {
    DEBUG_COLORS: 1 // without this settings, colors won't be shown
  }),
});

worker.stderr.pipe(process.stderr, { end: false });

Authors

  • TJ Holowaychuk
  • Nathan Rajlich
  • Andrew Rhyne
  • Josh Junon

Backers

Support us with a monthly donation and help us continue our activities. [Become a backer]

Sponsors

Become a sponsor and get your logo on our README on Github with a link to your site. [Become a sponsor]

License

(The MIT License)

Copyright (c) 2014-2017 TJ Holowaychuk <tj@vision-media.ca> Copyright (c) 2018-2021 Josh Junon

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the 'Software'), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.