ActiveRecord changes Logger formatting

Rails
1

Why does my Logger formatting change after I “require
‘active_record’”?

irb(main):001:0> require ‘logger’
=> true
irb(main):002:0> $logger = Logger::new STDOUT
=> #<Logger:0xb7dd0a38 @formatter=nil,
@default_formatter=#<Logger::Formatter:0xb7dd0a10
@datetime_format=nil>, @level=0, @progname=nil,
@logdev=#<Logger::LogDevice:0xb7dd09e8 @shift_age=nil, @filename=nil,
@mutex=#<Logger::LogDevice::LogDeviceMutex:0xb7dd09c0
@mon_waiting_queue=[], @mon_entering_queue=[], @mon_count=0,
@mon_owner=nil>, @dev=#IO:0xb7f10574, @shift_size=nil>>
irb(main):003:0>
irb(main):004:0* $logger.info{ “Expected log line style” }
I, [2009-05-24T06:58:44.599720 #22050] INFO – : Expected log line
style
=> true
irb(main):005:0>
irb(main):006:0* require ‘active_record’
=> true
irb(main):007:0> $logger.info{ “Why did AR change my log line
style?” }
Why did AR change my log line style?
=> true
irb(main):008:0>

Furthermore, how does one specify a user defined Logger format style?
I need to provide my Log lines in a format consistent with our other
applications.

2

Does anyone have any ideas here??? I no longer have useful Logger
messages. That’s very frustrating.

R

3

On May 30, 9:45 am, RobR [email protected] wrote:

Does anyone have any ideas here??? I no longer have useful Logger
messages. That’s very frustrating.

probably because activerecord requires activesupport and activesupport
does

(note that it defaults you to Logger::SimpleFormatter)

Fred

4

Frederick C. wrote:

probably because activerecord requires activesupport and activesupport
does

rails/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/logger.rb at 669fd84910586d4c791b6f5bf4320f68ac7845aa · rails/rails · GitHub

For what it’s worth, I share the original questioners general
unhappiness with Rails default logging format.

It’s possible to customize that without too much code, although somewhat
more confusing and under-documented than one might wish, and also seems
to change slightly from one Rails version to the next, for whatever
reasons the precise hooks into Rails logging mechanisms seem to be
somewhat unstable.

Here’s how I customize logging in a Rails 2.1.2 app, choosing to use the
Rails2 default “BuferredLogger” for what (I assume) is better efficiency
in disk writes, but with my own output formats. Anyone feel free to let
me know if there’s a better way, or if this is easier in subsequent
Rails versions. But it’s not too hard (once you figure it out, which
took me a bit of playing around).

In my lib directory, a sub-class of the BufferedLogger that actually
accepts a formatter, as the standard BufferedLogger (at least in 2.1.1)
oddly does not:

http://umlaut.rubyforge.org/svn/trunk/lib/umlaut_logger.rb

Then in environment.rb, set the logger and it’s formatter:

require_dependency 'umlaut_logger'
severity_level =

ActiveSupport::BufferedLogger.const_get(config.log_level.to_s.upcase)
log_file = File.join(RAILS_ROOT, “log”, “#{RAILS_ENV}.log”)

our_logger = UmlautLogger.new(log_file, severity_level)
our_logger.formatter = lambda do |severity_label, msg|
  time_fmtd = Time.now.strftime("%d %b %H:%M:%S")
  preface = "[#{time_fmtd}] (pid:#{$$}) #{severity_label}: "
  # stick our preface AFTER any initial newlines
  msg =~ /^(\n+)[^\n]/
  index = $1 ? $1.length : 0
  return msg.insert(index, preface)
end
config.logger = our_logger