Is there a way to log every request in the console with restify?

Question

I'm using restify to build an API, and I'm used to express. Is there a way to have restify log every request in the console, like express does with app.use(express.logger('dev'))?

Answer 1

Here is a very bare bones Restify/Bunyan example that will log every request:

'use strict';

var Logger = require('bunyan'),
    restify = require('restify'),
    log = new Logger.createLogger({
        name: 'app-name',
        serializers: {
            req: Logger.stdSerializers.req
        }
    }),
    server = restify.createServer({
        name: 'app-name',
        version: '0.1.0',
        log: log
    });

server.pre(function (request, response, next) {
    request.log.info({ req: request }, 'REQUEST');
    next();
});

server.get('/', function (request, response, next) {
    response.send('It worked!');
    next();
});

server.listen(8080, function () {
    console.log('%s listening at %s', server.name, server.url);
});

The key to this is the server.pre() call.

Start it up in one terminal window and do a curl request in another terminal window. You will see the response that it worked, and a log entry for the request.

Assuming a few things:

• You have a package.json file that will install bunyan and restify
• You put the code above in a file named server.js

You would do/see the following:

Terminal Window 1

$ node server.js
app-name listening at http://0.0.0.0:8080
{"name":"app-name","hostname":"leeloo.local","pid":97387,"level":30,"req":{"method":"GET","url":"/","headers":{"user-agent":"curl/7.30.0","host":"localhost:8080","accept":"*/*"},"remoteAddress":"127.0.0.1","remotePort":60870},"msg":"REQUEST","time":"2014-04-21T17:55:52.487Z","v":0}

Terminal Window 2

$ curl localhost:8080/
"It worked!"

If anyone would like to see my package.json I can put all of this up in a gist.