NAME

Log::Dispatch - Dispatches messages to one or more outputs

SYNOPSIS

  use Log::Dispatch;

  my $dispatcher = Log::Dispatch->new;

  $dispatcher->add( Log::Dispatch::File->new( name => 'file1',
                                              min_level => 'debug',
                                              filename => 'logfile' ) );

  $dispatcher->log( level => 'info',
                    message => 'Blah, blah' );

  my $sub = sub { my %p = @_;  return reverse $p{message}; };
  my $reversing_dispatcher = Log::Dispatch->new( callbacks => $sub );

DESCRIPTION

This module manages a set of Log::Dispatch::* objects, allowing you to add and remove output objects as desired.

METHODS

new
Returns a new Log::Dispatch object. This method takes one optional parameter:
- callbacks( \& or [ \&, \&, ... ] )
  This parameter may be a single subroutine reference or an array reference of subroutine references. These callbacks will be called in the order they are given and passed a hash containing the following keys:
```
 ( message => $log_message, level => $log_level )
```
  In addition, any key/value pairs passed to a logging method will be passed onto your callback.
  
  The callbacks are expected to modify the message and then return a single scalar containing that modified message. These callbacks will be called when either the log or log_to methods are called and will only be applied to a given message once. If they do not return the message then you will get no output. Make sure to return the message!
add( Log::Dispatch::* OBJECT )
Adds a new a Log::Dispatch::* object to the dispatcher. If an object of the same name already exists, then that object is replaced. A warning will be issued if the $^W is true.
NOTE: This method can really take any object that has methods called 'name' and 'log'.
remove($)
Removes the object that matches the name given to the remove method. The return value is the object being removed or undef if no object matched this.
log( level => $, message => $ )
Sends the message (at the appropriate level) to all the Log::Dispatch::* objects that the dispatcher contains (by calling the log_to method repeatedly).
log_to( name => $, level => $, message => $ )
Sends the message only to the named object.
level_is_valid( $string )
Returns true or false to indicate whether or not the given string is a valid log level. Can be called as either a class or object method.
output( $name )
Returns an output of the given name. Returns undef or an empty list, depending on context, if the given output does not exist.

CONVENIENCE METHODS

Version 1.6 of Log::Dispatch adds a number of convenience methods for logging. You may now call any valid log level (including valid abbreviations) as a method on the Log::Dispatch object with a single argument that is the message to be logged. This is converted into a call to the log method with the appropriate level.

For example:

 $dispatcher->alert('Strange data in incoming request');

translates to:

 $dispatcher->log( level => 'alert', message => 'Strange data in incoming request' );

These methods act like Perl's print built-in when given a list of arguments. Thus, the following calls are equivalent:

 my @array = ('Something', 'bad', 'is', here');
 $dispatcher->alert(@array);

 my $scalar = "@array";
 $dispatcher->alert($scalar);

One important caveat about these methods is that its not that forwards compatible. If I were to add more parameters to the log call, it is unlikely that these could be integrated into these methods without breaking existing uses. This probably means that any future parameters to the log method will never be integrated into these convenience methods. OTOH, I don't see any immediate need to expand the parameters given to the log method.

Log Levels

The log levels that Log::Dispatch uses are taken directly from the syslog man pages (except that I expanded them to full words). Valid levels are:

 debug
 info
 notice
 warning
 error
 critical
 alert
 emergency

Alternately, the numbers 0 through 7 may be used (debug is 0 and emergency is 7). The syslog standard of 'err', 'crit', and 'emerg' is also acceptable.

USAGE

This module is designed to be used as a one-stop logging system. In particular, it was designed to be easy to subclass so that if you want to handle messaging in a way not implemented in this package, you should be able to add this with minimal effort.

The basic idea behind Log::Dispatch is that you create a Log::Dispatch object and then add various logging objects to it (such as a file logger or screen logger). Then you call the log method of the dispatch object, which passes the message to each of the objects, which in turn decide whether or not to accept the message and what to do with it.

This makes it possible to call single method and send a message to a log file, via email, to the screen, and anywhere else, all with very little code needed on your part, once the dispatching object has been created.

The logging levels that Log::Dispatch uses are borrowed from the standard UNIX syslog levels, except that where syslog uses partial words (``err'') Log::Dispatch also allows the use of the full word as well (``error'').

Making your own logging objects

Making your own logging object is generally as simple as subclassing Log::Dispatch::Output and overriding the new and log methods. See the the Log::Dispatch::Output manpage docs for more details.

If you would like to create your own subclass for sending email then it is even simpler. Simply subclass the Log::Dispatch::Email manpage and override the send_email method. See the the Log::Dispatch::Email manpage docs for more details.

Why doesn't Log::Dispatch add a newline to the message?

A few people have written email to me asking me to add something that would tack a newline onto the end of all messages that don't have one. This will never happen. There are several reasons for this. First of all, Log::Dispatch was designed as a simple system to broadcast a message to multiple outputs. It does not attempt to understand the message in any way at all. Adding a newline implies an attempt to understand something about the message and I don't want to go there. Secondly, this is not very cross-platform and I don't want to go down the road of testing Config values to figure out what to tack onto messages based on OS.

I think people's desire to do this is because they are too focused on just the logging to files aspect of this module. In this case newlines make sense. However, imagine someone is using this module to log to a remote server and the interactions between the client and server use newlines as part of the control flow. Casually adding a newline could cause serious problems.

However, the 1.2 release adds the callbacks parameter for the Log::Dispatch object which you can easily use to add newlines to messages if you so desire.

RELATED MODULES

COPYRIGHT

The full text of the license can be found in the LICENSE file included with this module.

AUTHOR

Dave Rolsky, <autarch@urth.org>