logging - Ruby - share logger instance among module/classes

Question

Working on a little Ruby script that goes out to the web and crawls various services. I've got a module with several classes inside:

module Crawler
  class Runner
  class Options
  class Engine
end

I want to share one logger among all those of those classes. Normally I'd just put this in a constant in the module and reference it like so:

Crawler::LOGGER.info("Hello, world")

The problem is that I can't create my logger instance until I know where the output is going. You start the crawler via command line and at that point you can tell it you want to run in development (log output goes to STDOUT) or production (log output goes to a file, crawler.log):

crawler --environment=production

I have a class Options that parses the options passed in through the command line. Only at that point do I know how to instantiate the logger with the correct output location.

So, my question is: how/where to I put my logger object so that all my classes have access to it?

I could pass my logger instance to each new() call for every class instance I create, but I know there has to be a better, Rubyish way to do it. I'm imagining some weird class variable on the module that shared with class << self or some other magic. :)

A little more detail: Runner starts everything by passing the command line options to the Options class and gets back an object with a couple of instance variables:

module Crawler
  class Runner
    def initialize(argv)
      @options = Options.new(argv)
      # feels like logger initialization should go here
      # @options.log_output => STDOUT or string (log file name)
      # @options.log_level => Logger::DEBUG or Logger::INFO
      @engine = Engine.new()
    end
    def run
      @engine.go
    end
  end
end

runner = Runner.new(ARGV)
runner.run

I need the code in Engine to be able to access the logger object (along with a couple more classes that are initialized inside Engine). Help!

All of this could be avoided if you could just dynamically change the output location of an already-instantiated Logger (similar to how you change the log level). I'd instantiate it to STDOUT and then change over to a file if I'm in production. I did see a suggestion somewhere about changing Ruby's $stdout global variable, which would redirect output somewhere other than STDOUT, but this seems pretty hacky.

Thanks!

Answer 1

I like to have a logger method available in my classes, but I don't like sprinkling @logger = Logging.logger in all my initializers. Usually, I do this:

module Logging
  # This is the magical bit that gets mixed into your classes
  def logger
    Logging.logger
  end

  # Global, memoized, lazy initialized instance of a logger
  def self.logger
    @logger ||= Logger.new(STDOUT)
  end
end

Then, in your classes:

class Widget
  # Mix in the ability to log stuff ...
  include Logging

  # ... and proceed to log with impunity:
  def discombobulate(whizbang)
    logger.warn "About to combobulate the whizbang"
    # commence discombobulation
  end
end

Because the Logging#logger method can access the instance that the module is mixed into, it is trivial to extend your logging module to record the classname with log messages:

module Logging
  def logger
    @logger ||= Logging.logger_for(self.class.name)
  end

  # Use a hash class-ivar to cache a unique Logger per class:
  @loggers = {}

  class << self
    def logger_for(classname)
      @loggers[classname] ||= configure_logger_for(classname)
    end

    def configure_logger_for(classname)
      logger = Logger.new(STDOUT)
      logger.progname = classname
      logger
    end
  end
end

Your Widget now logs messages with its classname, and didn't need to change one bit :)