Yii2 logger not exporting messages from log targets

Question

I'm tightening up the logging for our Yii2 application and are struggling with getting the Logger to actually write messages to a log file when dealing with specific categories.

Our project consists of the following Yii2 'Applications' : console, common, frontend, backend and the logging for each of these components work fine for Exceptions generated by Yii and general PHP Exceptions. However when I add some info messages for a specific category in the console part (which I execute by running commands via SHH) the directory that the file should be in is created but the file itself is not. I see that the newly specified log messages are inside the correct 'FileTarget' when I do a var_dump of it.

I've set the flushInterval of the 'log' component to 1 and the exportInterval of the logTarget to 1 to make sure that the messages are to be written to the targets directly. I'm aware that this should be set to a larger value at some point, but for now I want to make sure that the logs are actually being saved. Changing the interval values doesn't seem to have any effect.

A workaround I came up with is to manually call target->export() for the specific FileTarget. This is how I currently make sure logs are being written:

In the Controller where I want to log message I do

Yii::info('Report created succesfully.', 'reports-create'); 
UtilitiesController::forceLogExport('reports-create');

The forceLogExport method does this:

public function forceLogExport($categoryName = ''){
        $logger = \Yii::getLogger();
        foreach($logger->dispatcher->targets as $target){
                if(!empty($categoryName)){
                    foreach($target->categories as $category){
                        if($category == $categoryName){ 
                            $target->export();
                        }    
                    }    
                }
        }
        $logger->flush(true);
    }

This does actually write the logs to the .log file, however there seem to be duplicate entries in the log now and it feels just plain wrong to call an export after every message.

As I read in the docs the actual writing of logs only happens when either these intervals are met OR when the application ends. I could imagine the application not ending properly so I tried forcing this by calling Yii:$app->end() directly after logging the message, but the file stays empty.

Since the problem is neither the application not ending (I can see that it does end) nor the interval being met (I see at least one message in the target and the interval is set to 1) I'm kind of at my wit's end why the logs are not exported. If anyone could perhaps elaborate any further on when/where Yii calls the ->export() method itself that would be a big help.

EDIT: added the console/config/main.php settings. Slightly changed my story, initially I wrote that 'the log file was being created but the messages were not being written in it.' but in fact only the directory that should contain the files was created, not the log file itself.

<?php
return [
    'id' => 'console',
    'basePath' => dirname(__DIR__),
    'bootstrap' => ['log'],
    'controllerNamespace' => 'console\controllers',
    'components' => [
        'user' => [
            'class' => 'yii\web\User',
            'identityClass' => 'app\models\User',
            //'enableAutoLogin' => true,
        ],
        'session' => [ // for use session in console application
            'class' => 'yii\web\Session'
        ],
        'log' => [
            'flushInterval' => 1,
            'traceLevel' => YII_DEBUG ? 3 : 0,
            'targets' => [
                [
                    'class' => 'yii\log\FileTarget',
                    'levels' => ['error','info', 'warning'],
                    'categories' => ['reports-schedule'], 
                    'exportInterval' => 1,
                    'logVars' => [null],
                    'logFile' => '@app/../logs/console/'. date('Y') . '/' . date('m') . '/reports-schedule/' . 'reports-schedule_' . date('d-m-Y') . '.log'
                ],
        [ 
                    'class' => 'yii\log\FileTarget',
                    'levels' => ['error','info', 'warning'],
                    'categories' => ['reports-create'], 
                    'exportInterval' => 1,
                    'logVars' => [null],
                    'logFile' => '@app/../logs/console/'. date('Y') . '/' . date('m') . '/reports-create/' . 'reports-create_' . date('d-m-Y') . '.log'
                ],
        // and 6 other similarly structured targets
        [...],
        [...],
        [...],
        [...],
        [...],
        [...],
        ],
    ]
];

UPDATE: it seems like I'll have to stick to manually calling ->export() on the desired log target. The problem I had with duplicate log entries (same message, same timestamp) being written was due to the fact that I had set the exportInterval property to 1 for the target (which I initially did to make sure the messages were exported at all). I suppose the logger stores messages until the value of exportInterval is met and then expect those messages to be written to the targets. I fixed duplicate entries from being written by removed the exportInterval property so Yii takes the default value (1000). For my case this would be sufficient since I wouldn't run into those numbers but for anyone reading this please consider your use case and check if you would run into anything close to that in a single cycle.

Answer 1

I had a similar issue at some point and I think this should be sufficient enough for your case.

    Yii::$app->log->targets['reports-schedule']->logFile = $logPath;
    Yii::info($message, $category);
    Yii::getLogger()->flush();

This way you can specify a dynamic log path inside your schedule target and after flush the logger continues as it should.