Delightful Logging

Many ruby project scaffolders (like bueller &Co.) produce a file tree consisting of main module file (MODULE_NAME.rb needed to syntax-sugaring the project stuff requires,) some additional garbage and a lib/MODULE_NAME/version.rb file. The latter looks like:

# encoding: utf-8

module MyModule
  VERSION  = "0.0.1"
end

I get used to utilize this version.rb to define all the project-wide constants etc. If the project requires config, there is a code to read config.yml placed, as well as other predefines.

Nowadays I rejoice in even better approach. There is mere usual but very effective way to make a Logger instance (and others someone likely needs all over the project) accessible from anywhere around the code. To achieve that I simply create a module Kernel section inside the version.rb and put there all the stuff I might need everywhere:

# encoding: utf-8

module MyModule
  VERSION  = "0.0.1"
  LOGGER_STREAM, LOGGER_LEVEL = load_config || STDOUT, Logger::INFO
end

module Kernel
  @@logger = Logger.new(MyModule::LOGGER_STREAM)
  @@logger.level = MyModule::LOGGER_LEVEL
end

The trick is that Kernel module is being included within Object class and since all the classes have Object as their superclass, all of them obtain an access to @@logger class variable transparently. Now anywhere within the project scope we may write:

@@logger.info "Hello, I’m logger"

yielding:

# ⇒  I, [2013-02-09T18:44:18.208111 #27511]  INFO -- : Hello, I’m logger

Delightful Logging ruby 52 tricks 51

Delightful Logging

ruby 52

tricks 51