Logging Best Practices

Implement secure, structured logging with proper levels and context.

Log Levels

Level Use For Production

DEBUG Detailed debugging Off

INFO Normal operations On

WARN Potential issues On

ERROR Errors with recovery On

FATAL Critical failures On

Structured Logging (Winston)

const winston = require('winston');

const logger = winston.createLogger({ level: process.env.LOG_LEVEL || 'info', format: winston.format.combine( winston.format.timestamp(), winston.format.json() ), defaultMeta: { service: 'api-service' }, transports: [ new winston.transports.Console(), new winston.transports.File({ filename: 'error.log', level: 'error' }) ] });

// Usage logger.info('User logged in', { userId: '123', ip: '192.168.1.1' }); logger.error('Payment failed', { error: err.message, orderId: '456' });

Request Context

const { AsyncLocalStorage } = require('async_hooks'); const storage = new AsyncLocalStorage();

app.use((req, res, next) => { const context = { requestId: req.headers['x-request-id'] || uuid(), userId: req.user?.id }; storage.run(context, next); });

function log(level, message, meta = {}) { const context = storage.getStore() || {}; logger.log(level, message, { ...context, ...meta }); }

PII Sanitization

const sensitiveFields = ['password', 'ssn', 'creditCard', 'token'];

function sanitize(obj) { const sanitized = { ...obj }; for (const field of sensitiveFields) { if (sanitized[field]) sanitized[field] = '[REDACTED]'; } if (sanitized.email) { sanitized.email = sanitized.email.replace(/(.{2}).@/, '$1**@'); } return sanitized; }

Best Practices

• Use structured JSON format

• Include correlation IDs across services

• Sanitize all PII before logging

• Use async logging for performance

• Implement log rotation

• Never log at DEBUG in production

Additional Implementations

See references/advanced-logging.md for:

• Python structlog setup

• Go zap high-performance logging

• ELK Stack integration

• AWS CloudWatch configuration

• OpenTelemetry tracing

Never Do

• Log passwords or tokens

• Use console.log in production

• Log inside tight loops

• Include stack traces for client errors