CODEWITHSUNDEEP
node.jsazure
MARKAND Bhatt
MARKAND Bhatt

Reputation: 2630

Preferred way of logging in nodejs deployed to Azure App Services

I have created nodejs Web API, hosted as Azure App Service.

What would be the best way to log errors/info/debug/warning?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 3900

Answers (2)

Graham
Graham

Reputation: 7802

We're using Azure Log Analytics with some custom node-winston middleware that sends an async request out to the ALA REST service. However, there is a bit of a lag between the event being sent from our node Web App and it appearing in the ALA dashboard so although it will be good for monitoring a production environment it's not great for rapid debugging or testing.

If you just write to console.log then everything does get stored in a log file that you can access through the Kudu console. Kudu also has the ability to do a live tail of the console, as does the azure command line interface. Because of this we're debugging using those and leaving ALA for the future.

Once we figure out what the pattern is for those logs being written (i.e. filename/size/time/etc.) we'll drop a scheduled Azure Function in to regularly archive those logs into cold blob storage.

I'll also add that according to the Twelve Factor App in XI they recommend writing logs to stdout, which is what console.log does. I always take these opinionated frameworks/methodologies as guidance and not strict rules, but at these seem to be grounded in reality and will at the very least spawn some interesting discussions among your team.

Upvotes: 2

Thiago Custodio
Thiago Custodio

Reputation: 18387

As you're using Azure, I would recommend the Application Insights:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/application-insights/app-insights-nodejs

Upvotes: 1

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