Native Console Logging

As of MochiKit 1.3, the default logger will log all messages to your browser's native console. This is currently supported in Safari, Opera 9, and Firefox when the FireBug extension is installed. MochiKit 1.4 adds support for the relevant APIs for Internet Explorer (the Debugger and the Atlas framework, see here).

To disable this behavior:

MochiKit.Logging.logger.useNativeConsole = false;

Bookmarklet Based Debugging

JavaScript is at a serious disadvantage without a standard console for "print" statements. Everything else has one. The closest thing that you get in a browser environment is the alert function, which is absolutely evil.

This leaves you with one reasonable solution: do your logging in the page somehow. The problem here is that you don't want to clutter the page with debugging tools. The solution to that problem is what we call BBD, or Bookmarklet Based Debugging [3].

Simply create a bookmarklet for javascript:MochiKit.Logging.logger.debuggingBookmarklet(), and whack it whenever you want to see what's in the logger. Of course, this means you must drink the MochiKit.Logging kool-aid. It's tangy and sweet, don't worry.

Currently this uses MochiKit.LoggingPane if loaded and otherwise falls back to ugly alert messages.

Constructors

LogMessage(num, level, info):

Properties:

num:

Identifier for the log message

level:

Level of the log message ("INFO", "WARN", "DEBUG", etc.)

info:

All other arguments passed to log function as an Array

timestamp:

Date object timestamping the log message

Availability:

Available in MochiKit 1.3.1+

Logger([maxSize]):

A basic logger object that has a buffer of recent messages plus a listener dispatch mechanism for "real-time" logging of important messages.

maxSize is the maximum number of entries in the log. If maxSize >= 0, then the log will not buffer more than that many messages. So if you don't like logging at all, be sure to pass 0.

There is a default logger available named "logger", and several of its methods are also global functions:

logger.log	-> log
logger.debug	-> logDebug
logger.warning	-> logWarning
logger.error	-> logError
logger.fatal	-> logFatal

Availability:

Available in MochiKit 1.3.1+

Logger.prototype.addListener(ident, filter, listener):

Add a listener for log messages.

ident is a unique identifier that may be used to remove the listener later on.

filter can be one of the following:

null:

listener(msg) will be called for every log message received.

string:

logLevelAtLeast(filter) will be used as the function (see below).

function:

filter(msg) will be called for every msg, if it returns true then listener(msg) will be called.

listener is a function that takes one argument, a log message. A log message is an object (LogMessage instance) that has at least these properties:

num:

A counter that uniquely identifies a log message (per-logger)

level:

A string or number representing the log level. If string, you may want to use LogLevel[level] for comparison.

info:

An Array of objects passed as additional arguments to the log function.

Availability:

Available in MochiKit 1.3.1+

Logger.prototype.baseLog(level, message[, ...]):

The base functionality behind all of the log functions. The first argument is the log level as a string or number, and all other arguments are used as the info list.

This function is available partially applied as:

Logger.debug	'DEBUG'
Logger.log	'INFO'
Logger.error	'ERROR'
Logger.fatal	'FATAL'
Logger.warning	'WARNING'

For the default logger, these are also available as global functions, see the Logger constructor documentation for more info.

Availability:

Available in MochiKit 1.3.1+

Logger.prototype.clear():

Clear all messages from the message buffer.

Availability:

Available in MochiKit 1.3.1+

Logger.prototype.debuggingBookmarklet():

Display the contents of the logger in a useful way for browsers.

Currently, if MochiKit.LoggingPane is loaded, then a pop-up MochiKit.LoggingPane.LoggingPane will be used. Otherwise, it will be an alert with Logger.prototype.getMessageText().

Availability:

Available in MochiKit 1.3.1+

Logger.prototype.dispatchListeners(msg):

Dispatch a log message to all listeners.

Availability:

Available in MochiKit 1.3.1+

Logger.prototype.getMessages([howMany]):

Returns a list of messages from the message buffer, ordered from the oldest to the newest message. If howMany is specified, only the last howMany messages are returned. Otherwise all messages in the buffer are returned.

Availability:

Available in MochiKit 1.3.1+

Logger.prototype.getMessageText([howMany]):

Get a string representing up to the last howMany messages in the message buffer. The default is 30.

The message looks like this:

LAST {messages.length} MESSAGES:
  [{msg.num}] {msg.level}: {m.info.join(' ')}
  [{msg.num}] {msg.level}: {m.info.join(' ')}
  ...

If you want some other format, use Logger.prototype.getMessages and do it yourself.

Availability:

Available in MochiKit 1.3.1+

Logger.prototype.removeListener(ident):

Remove a listener using the ident given to Logger.prototype.addListener

Availability:

Available in MochiKit 1.3.1+

Functions

alertListener(msg):

Ultra-obnoxious alert(...) listener

Availability:

Available in MochiKit 1.3.1+

log(message[, info[, ...]]):

Log an INFO message to the default logger

Availability:

Available in MochiKit 1.3.1+

logDebug(message[, info[, ...]]):

Log a DEBUG message to the default logger

Availability:

Available in MochiKit 1.3.1+

logError(message[, info[, ...]]):

Log an ERROR message to the default logger

Availability:

Available in MochiKit 1.3.1+

logFatal(message[, info[, ...]]):

Log a FATAL message to the default logger

Availability:

Available in MochiKit 1.3.1+

logLevelAtLeast(minLevel):

Return a function that will match log messages whose level is at least minLevel

Availability:

Available in MochiKit 1.3.1+

logWarning(message[, info[, ...]]):

Log a WARNING message to the default logger

Availability:

Available in MochiKit 1.3.1+