A collection of backends, formatters, and decorators for lager. All configurations are done as property lists.

Decorators

Decorators are formatters that take another formatter as a parameter, then modify the output. All require a parameter:

{formatter, {Formatter, Config}}

This will take the output of lager_default_formatter and add ansi color codes to it for output.

lager_gelf_formatter

Creates a json record of the log message, including all metadata, suitable for sending to graylog2. Warning: strings will be turned into arrays of integers while binaries are mapped to JSON strings. The formatter tries to take an educated guess on metadata, but host and facility should be binaries in the configuration.

Config

{host, Name}  % name of the host to report.  default: "erlang"
{facility, Name} % facility name used to report. default: "erlang"
{short_message_size, N::integer()} % first N bytes of the message will be the short message. default: 80
{utf8,boolean()} % whether to use utf8 or not.  default: true 

lager_json_formatter

A basic JSON writer. Creates individual objects for each message, converting the metadata properties to key: value pairs.

Config

{utf8,boolean()} % whether to use utf8 or not.  default: true 

lager_ansi_color_decorator

Creates color for each severity that shows on the console. Useful when dumping to the console, but will just junk up log files with ANSI color codes.

Config

{formatter, {Formatter,Config}}  % The formatter and it's config that we will wrap.  Required.
{algorithm, gzip | compress | zip } % The algorithm to use for compression.  Default: gzip
{debug | info | notice | warning | error | critical | alert | emergency, color()} % override the color for a particular log level.  Optional.

lager_zlib_decorator

Compressess the output in a variety of compression formats. Note that the messages are compressed individually, so you can't write a compressed file this way due to the fact that gzip, compress, and zip do not concatenate in a straightforward manner. This is largely intended to be used with the udp backend.

Config

{formatter, {Formatter,Config}}  % The formatter and it's config that we will wrap.  Required.
{algorithm, gzip | compress | zip } % The algorithm to use for compression.  Default: gzip

lager_udp_backend

Sends the log message as a UDP packet to a host and port.

Config

{host, any()}  % who to send the packets to.  required
{port, integer()} % udp port to send to.  required

{level, level()}  % threshold to report on this logger.  default: debug
{formatter,atom()} % formatter.  default: lager_default_formatter),
{format_config, any()} % configuraiton for the formatter.  default: []
{inet_family, inet | inet6} % IPv4 or IPv6?  default: inet
{name, any()}  % name of the backend (for trace support).  default: {Host,Port}

Example: Graylog2 Config

Supporting Graylog2 is what started most of this. Use this to send compressed gelf to a Graylog2 server

{lager_udp_backend, [
   {host, "graylog2.myhost.com"},
   {port, 12201},
   {level, debug}, 
   {name, graylog2},
   {formatter, lager_zlib_decorator},
   {format_config, [
     {algorithm, compress},
     {formatter, {
       lager_gelf_formatter,[
         {host,<<"server">>},
         {facility,<<"erlang process">>}
       ]}
     }
   ]}
 ]}