How is this formatted?

[jasonwilliams]

It looks like the default is to just log JSON objects, this isn't really ideal.
Is there some way to format the output somehow?

If there is it would be great if it could be added to the documentation

[bd82]

Hello @jasonwilliams

Structured (JSON) logging is indeed opinionated and relevant for our use cases.
Under the hood Winston is used to implement the logger.

The issue is that:

• On one hand its best to keep the "internals" (Winston) hidden from the end user, e.g: to allow changing the logging "engine" in the future without breaking changes.

• On the other hand we may want to expose Winston related transports / format objects to enable
  supporting more use cases.

I am not sure how to resolve this conflict.
@jasonwilliams any thoughts?

@saggir FYI.

[jasonwilliams]

@bd82 completely understand.

For the case of not wanting to expose winston internals you could offer an opinionated inline option. Which logs the same data but not in JSON. Something like
[time] - [logLevel] - [message]

Maybe you could offer some limited options for users to pick from?
I would personally be ok with this.

[bd82]

Sorry for the late response @jasonwilliams 😢

Maybe you could offer some limited options for users to pick from?

That is a possible option, I see one issue which is probably resolvable:

• The logging APIs look like: warn(msg: string, ...args: any[]): void;
• This allows adding metadata properties to the structured log entry:

  •  {
      "foo": 666,
      "bar": 333,
      "label": "vscode-logging-extension-example",
      "level": "error",
      "message": "Testing logging error level",
      "time": "2020-08-13 08:23:38.488Z"
     }

• When performing single text line log entries, the variable argument list API
  should probably change to enable assembling the text message using placeholders e.g "%s %d".

I believe this is can be solved by customizing the winston formatter defined under the hood.

[bd82]

BTW I am no longer this project's owner.

We need @saggir to respond here and decide if this is a topic

• he would be interested in implementing.
• or be willing to accept contributions for.
• Or outside the scope of this project.

[saggir]

Thank you @jasonwilliams and @bd82
I think that adding the format option is a good idea...
We will add it to our backlog items, you are more than welcome to contribute it if you wish

[christian-bromann]

@saggir what is the status here? I am happy to move this forward if we stay with the current decision of exposing the winston object. Wdyt?