---
title: "Yet Another Log4j Inspired Logging Framework"
author: "Stefan Fleck"
date: "`r Sys.Date()`"
output: 
  rmarkdown::html_vignette:
    toc: true
    number_sections: true
vignette: >
  %\VignetteIndexEntry{lgr}
  %\VignetteEncoding{UTF-8}
  %\VignetteEngine{knitr::rmarkdown}
editor_options: 
  chunk_output_type: console
---

```{r setup, include = FALSE}
library(lgr)

knitr::opts_chunk$set(
  collapse = TRUE,
  comment = "#>"
)
```

# Introduction

lgr is a logging framework for R inspired by 
[Apache Log4j](https://logging.apache.org/log4j/2.x/) and
[Python logging](https://docs.python.org/3/library/logging.html).
It follows an object oriented design implemented through
[R6 classes](https://github.com/r-lib/R6). This enables lgr to have a larger
set of features than other logging packages for R, and makes it flexible and 
easy to extend.  

If you are not sure if lgr is the right package for you, take a look 
[examples](#examples) to see what lgr can do for you.




## Quickstart

lgr comes with a so-called **root logger** that is ready to go after you install 
it. If you are a package developer you can (and should) set up a new Logger for
your package, but more on that later. For many use cases the root Logger will 
suffice.


### Logging to the console
```{r}
# the root logger is called "lgr"
lgr$info("Vampire stories are generally located in Styria.")
```

You can use formatting strings that are passed on to `sprintf()` in lgr.
```{r}
lgr$error("Vampires generally arrive in carriages drawn by %i black horses.", 2)
```


### Logging to plaintext files

Usually you don't (only) want to log to the console, you want to log to files.
Output of Loggers is managed by Appenders. The root Logger is preconfigured
with a console Appender (that is why we see output in the console). Let's
add a file Appender:

```{r}
tf <- tempfile(fileext = ".info")
lgr$add_appender(AppenderFile$new(tf), name = "file")
lgr$info("You must think I am joking")
readLines(tf)
```
The various Appenders available in lgr are R6 classes. To instantiate an object
of that class (i.e. create a new appender) you have to use the `$new()` function
as in the example above. Whenever you see something in lgr that 
`IsNamedLikeThis`, you can be sure that it is such an R6 class. 

If you look at the output, you see that the timestamp format of the file 
appender is slightly different to the timestamp format of the console Appender. 
Formatting is handled by **Layouts**, and each Appender has exactly one:

```{r}
lgr$appenders$file$set_layout(LayoutFormat$new(timestamp_fmt = "%B %d %T"))
lgr$info("No, I am quite serious")
readLines(tf)

#cleanup
unlink(tf)
```


### Logging to JSON files

If you log to files, you should not log normal text. If you want to analyse 
your logs later, it's much better to log to a format like JSON:

```{r}
# cleanup behind the old Appender
unlink(tf)  
lgr$remove_appender("file")

# setup a JSON appender
lgr$add_appender(AppenderJson$new(tf), name = "json")
lgr$info("We lived in Styria")
```

JSON is still somewhat human readable
```{r}
cat(readLines(tf))
```

and easy for machines to parse
```{r}
read_json_lines(tf)
```

Many Appenders provide either a `$show()` method and a `$data` active
binding convenience, and so you do not have to call `readLines()` & co manually. 

```{r}
# show is a method and takes some extra arguments, like maximum number of lines
# to show
lgr$appenders$json$show()

# $data always returns a data.frame if available. It is an active binding 
# rather than a method, so no extra arguments are possible
lgr$appenders$json$data  
```

Please note that under the hood, `AppenderJson` is just an `AppenderFile` with 
`LayoutJson`. The only difference is AppenderJson provides a `$data()` method 
while AppenderFile does not.



### Custom Fields

Unlike many others Loggers for R, lgr treats a  *LogEvent* as a unit of data,
not just a message with a timestamp. A log event can contain arbitrary data,
though not all Appenders can handle that well. The JSON appender we added
above is particularly good at handling most R objects.

```{r}
# The default console appender displays custom fields as pseudo-json after the message
lgr$info("Styria has", poultry = c("capons", "turkeys"))

# JSON can store most R objects quite naturally 
read_json_lines(tf)
read_json_lines(tf)$poultry[[2]]  # works because poultry is a list column
```

```{r echo = FALSE}
lgr$remove_appender("json")
unlink(tf)
```


### What Else

If the examples above have piqued your interest, the rest of this vignette
will provide more details on the workings of lgr. Discussing all Appenders
and configuration options is beyond the scope of this vignette, please refer
to the [function reference](https://s-fleck.github.io/lgr/reference/index.html)
for that.



# Usage

## Structure of the logging system

If you want custom logging configurations, you have to understand the structure
of the logging process.

* A **Logger** collects information and dispatches it to its *Appenders*, and
  also the *Appenders* of its *Parent Loggers* (also see the section on 
  hierarchical logging)
* An **Appender** writes the log message to destination (the console, a file, 
  a database, etc...).
* A **Layout** is used by an Appender to format LogEvents. For example,
  `AppenderFile` uses `LayoutFormat` by default to write human readable log
  events to a text file, but can also use `LayoutJson` produce machine 
  readable JSON lines logfiles.
* **LogEvents** are produced by the Logger and dispatched to Appenders. They 
  contain all the information that is being logged (think of
  it as a row in table). LogEvents usually contain the log level, a timestamp,
  a message, the name of the calling function, and a 
  [reference](https://adv-r.hadley.nz/r6.html#r6-semantics]) to the Logger
  that created it. In addition, a LogEvent can contain any number of custom
  fields, but not all Appenders/Layouts support custom fields. For example
  if you use `AppenderFormat` with `LayoutFormat` you can only use the standard 
  fields in your log message, while `LayoutJson` supports custom fields in 
  a quite natural manner. See [examples 1 & 2](#examples)


### On R6 classes

The elements described above are R6 classes. R6 is an object orientation
system for R that is used by many popular packages such as shiny, dplyr, 
plumber, roxygen2, and testthat but often behind the scenes and not as exposed
as in lgr.

You recognize R6 classes in this package because they are named following the 
`UpperCamelCase` naming convention. While there is only one kind of Logger and 
one kind of LogEvent, there are several subclasses of Appenders and Layouts.

An introduction to R6 classes is beyond the scope of this document, but you
can find the official documentation [here](https://r6.r-lib.org/) and there is
also this [talk on Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GEFd8rZQgY). In
short R6 classes store data (fields) together with functions (methods) and
have to be instantiated with `<classname>$new()`. So if you want to create
a new `AppenderFile`, you do this by calling 
`AppenderFile$new(file = tempfile())`.

Please not that Loggers should never be instantiated directly with `$new()` but
always with `get_logger()`.



## Log levels

lgr supports the standard log4j Log Levels outlined bellow. The Log Level of
an event represents its severity. The named log levels are really just 
nicknames for integer values, and you can use the `character` or `integer` 
representations interchangeably. You can also use arbitrary integer values 
(greater than `0`), but you are encouraged to stick to the ones bellow. 

```{r, echo = FALSE}
ll <- data.frame(
  `Level` = c(0, seq(100, 600, by = 100), NA),
  `Name` = c("off", "fatal", "error", "warn", "info", "debug", "trace", "all"),
  `Description` = c(
    "Tells a Logger or Appender to suspend all logging",
    "Critical error that leads to program abort. Should always indicate a `stop()` or similar",
    "A severe error that does not trigger program abort",
    "A potentially harmful situation, like `warning()`",
    "An informational message on the progress of the application",
    "Finer grained informational messages that are mostly useful for debugging",
    "An even finer grained message than debug ([more info](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/279690/why-does-the-trace-level-exist-and-when-should-i-use-it-rather-than-debug))",
    "Tells a Logger or Appender to process all log events"
  )
) 

knitr::kable(ll)
```

`off` and `all` are valid thresholds for Appenders and Loggers,
but not valid levels for LogEvents; e.g. `lgr$set_threshold(NA)` makes sense,
but `lgr$log("all", "an example message")` does not.

The list of named log levels is stored as a global option 
(`getOption("lgr.log_levels")`) and you can use `add_log_levels()` and 
`remove_log_levels()` to define your own named levels if you want to.
There are only predefined logging methods (`lgr$fatal()`, etc..) for the
standard log levels and you have to use `lgr$log(level, message)` to create
a LogEvent with a custom log level.


## Logging with the Root Logger

lgr comes with a pre-configured root Logger. It is called *root* because
you can [set up a tree of Loggers](#hierarchy) that descent from it, but for 
basic use you will not have to worry about that.


### Logging syntax

lgr Loggers are R6 objects with *methods* (functions) for logging. You can refer 
to the *root* logger with `lgr`. 

```{r}
lgr$fatal("This is an important message about %s going wrong", "->something<-")
lgr$trace("Trace messages are still hidden")
lgr$set_threshold("trace")
lgr$trace("Unless we lower the threshold")

```

### Formatting strings 

You can use `sprintf()` style formatting strings directly in log messages. 
```{r}
lgr$info("The sky was the color of %s, tuned to a dead chanel", "television")
```


## LogEvents: The atomic unit of logging

LogEvents are objects that store all information collected by the Logger. They
are passed on to Appenders that output them, but Appenders usually don't 
utilize all the information present in a log event. The last event produced
by a Logger is stored in its `last_event` field.

```{r}
lgr$info("Vampire stories are generally located in Styria")
lgr$last_event  # a summary output of the event
lgr$last_event$values  # all values stored in the event as a list
```

LogEvents can contain not only these standard values, but an arbitrary number
of extra values. These extra values are passed as named arguments to the logging
function (as opposed as to parameters to `sprintf()`, which are passed as 
unnamed arguments). It is up to the Appender whether to process them further or 
not. 

You should consider making use of custom fields liberally and using output
formats that support them (such as JSON), rather than producing elaborately 
formatted but hard to parse log messages. If you ever want to analyse your 
log data, you will thank me for this tip.

```{r}
# bad
lgr$info("Processing track '%s' with %s waypoints", "track.gpx", 32)

# Good
tf <- tempfile()
lgr$add_appender(AppenderJson$new(tf), "json")
lgr$info("Processing track", file = "track.gpx", waypoints = 32)
lgr$appenders$json$data

```
```{r echo = FALSE}
lgr$remove_appender("json")
unlink(tf)
```




## Thresholds & Filters: controlling output detail {#thresholds}

To control the level of detail of the log output, you can set **thresholds** for
Loggers and Appenders. A Logger with a threshold of `warn` will only create
LogEvents of the priorities `warn`, `error` and `fatal` and dispatch them
to its Appenders.

> A **threshold** of a Logger or Appender is the minimum **log level** a 
> LogEvent must have so that that Logger/Appender processes it.

If you require more complex logic to decide whether a LogEvent should be
created/processed you can also assign **filters** to Loggers/Appenders. 
Filters are just functions that have exactly one argument, 
`event` (the LogEvent to be filtered), and return `TRUE` or `FALSE`. They 
will be applied after the threshold is checked. Alternatively there is also a 
formal R6 class for Filters (?EventFilter) that you can use, but this is usually 
not necessary.

examples:
```{r}
f1 <- function(event) { grepl("bird", event$msg) }
lgr$set_filters(list(f1))

lgr$info("is it a plane?")
lgr$info("no! is it a bird?")

# since this is not a very useful filter, we better remove it again
lgr$set_filters(NULL)
```


## Appenders: Managing log destinations

The root logger only logs to the console by default. If you want to redirect 
the output to a file you can just add a file appender to lgr.

```{r}
tf <- tempfile()

# Add a new appender to a logger. We don't have to supply a name, but that
# makes it easier to remove later.
lgr$add_appender(AppenderFile$new(file = tf), name = "file")

# configure lgr so that it logs everything to the file, but only info and above
# to the console
lgr$set_threshold(NA)
lgr$appenders$console$set_threshold("info")
lgr$appenders$file$set_threshold(NA)
lgr$info("Another informational message")
lgr$debug("A debug message not shown by the console appender")

readLines(tf)

# Remove the appender again
lgr$remove_appender("file")
unlink(tf)
```


## Inheritance: Hierarchical Loggers {#hierarchy}

Logger hierarchies are a powerful concept to organize logging for different
parts of a larger system. This is mainly relevant for package developers. It
is good practice to have a separate Logger for each package. Since it is not
common in R to build complex systems of hierarchically organised packages,
hierarchies will usually be pretty flat (i.e. most Loggers will only inherit
from the root logger). 

Each newly created Logger is child to a parent Logger, derived from its name. 
So `lg <- get_logger("foo/bar")` creates the logger with the qualified 
name `foo/bar` whose parent is the logger `foo` whose parent is (implicitly)
the `root` logger. If the logger `foo` does not exist in that scenario, it is 
created automatically. This behaviour might sound strange at first, but it mimics
tried and tested behaviour of python logging. This way logging is decoupled
from the business logic and your program will not abort if you forgot to
initialize some logger up the hierarchy for whatever reason.

A logger dispatches the LogEvents it creates not only to its own
Appenders, but also to the Appenders of all its ancestral Loggers (ignoring
the threshold and Filters of the ancestral Loggers, but not of the Appenders). 
When you define Loggers for your package, you should *not* configure them
(with custom Appenders or thresholds); that should be left to the user of the 
package.

If all this sounds confusing to you, take a look at the
[examples](#examples-hierarchy) and `?logger_tree`. The common use 
cases are pretty easy to understand and illustrate the *how* and *why* pretty 
well.

Example hierarchy for the package **fancymodel** that provides a model along
with a plumber API and a shiny web-interface to the package.
``` r
# prints a tree structure of all registered loggers
logger_tree()
```

```
root [info] -> 1 appenders
└─fancymodel
  ├─plumber
  └─#shiny
    ├─server [trace] -> 2 appenders
    └─ui -> 1 appenders
```

### Log flow

The graph bellow outlines the flow of LogEvents through the logging system.
This is an important reference if you want to work with Filters and Logger
hierarchies.


![](log_flow.svg)


## Logging with LoggerGlue

[glue](https://glue.tidyverse.org/) is very nicely designed package for string
interpolation. It makes composing log messages more flexible and comfortable
at the price of an additional dependency and slightly less performance than 
`sprintf()` (which is used by normal Loggers).
To take advantage of glue, simply create a new LoggerGlue like this:

```{r}
# install.packages("glue")

lg <- get_logger_glue("glue/logger")

lg$info(
  "glue automatically ", 
  "pastes together unnamed arguments ",
  "and evaluates arbitray expressions inside braces {Sys.Date()}"
)

```

Glue lets you define temporary variables inside the `glue()` call.
As with the normal Logger, named arguments get turned into custom fields. 
```{r}
lg$info("For more info on glue see {website}", website = "https://glue.tidyverse.org/")
```

You can suppress this behaviour by making named argument start with a `"."`.
```{r}
lg$info("Glue is available from {.cran}", .cran = "https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=glue")
```


# Configuration


## With setters

There are several different ways to configure loggers. The most straight 
forward one is to use *setters* to specify the Loggers properties.
```{r}
lg <- get_logger("test")
lg$config(NULL)  # resets logger to unconfigured state
lg$set_threshold("fatal")
```

lgr sets up Loggers in a way so that R6 piping with `$` is possible. This works 
similar to the magrittr (`#%>#`) pipes.
```{r}
lg$
  set_threshold("info")$
  set_appenders(AppenderConsole$new(threshold = "info"))$
  set_propagate(FALSE)
```

## With a list object
```{r}
lg$config(list(
  threshold = "info",
  propagate = FALSE,
  appenders = AppenderConsole$new(threshold = "info")
))
```

## With YAML or JSON

You can use YAML and JSON config files with lgr. 
```{r eval = FALSE}
lg$config("path/to/config.yaml")
lg$config("path/to/config.json")
```

You can also pass in YAML/JSON directly as a character string (or vector with
one element per line)
```{r}
# Via YAML
cfg <- "
  Logger:
    threshold: info
    propagate: false
    appenders:
      AppenderConsole:
        threshold: info
"
lg$config(cfg)
```


# Examples {#examples}

## Logging to the console 

lgr comes with simple but powerful formatting syntax for LogEvents. Please
refer to `?format.LogEvent` for the full list of available placeholders.

```{r}
lg <- get_logger("test")
lg$set_appenders(list(cons = AppenderConsole$new()))
lg$set_propagate(FALSE)


lg$info("the default format")
lg$appenders$cons$layout$set_fmt("%L (%n) [%t] %c(): !! %m !!")
lg$info("A more involved custom format")
```

If this is not enough for you, you can use `LayoutGlue` based on the awesome
[glue](https://github.com/tidyverse/glue) package. The syntax is a bit more
verbose, and `AppenderGlue` is a bit less performant than `AppenderFormat`, but
the possibilities are endless. 

```{r}
# install.packages("glue")
library(glue)
lg$appenders$cons$set_layout(LayoutGlue$new(
  fmt = "{.logger$name} {level_name} {caller}: {toupper(msg)}"
))
lg$info("with glue")
```
All fields of the [LogEvent] object are exposed through LayoutGlue, so please 
refer to `?LogEvent` for a list of all available Fields.


## Logging to JSON files

JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) is an open-standard file format that uses 
human-readable text to transmit data objects consisting of attribute–value 
pairs and array data types ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON)).
JSON is the **recommended text-based logging format when logging to files**
  ^[Technically, the logger does not produce standard JSON files but 
  [JSON lines](https://jsonlines.org/)], 
as it is human- as well as machine readable. You should only log to a different 
format if you have very good reasons for it. The easiest way to log to
JSON files is with AppenderJson^[AppenderJson is just an AppenderFile with 
LayotJson as default Layout and a few extra features]


```{r}
# install.packages("jsonlite")
tf <- tempfile()

lg <- get_logger("test")

lg$set_appenders(list(json = AppenderJson$new(file = tf)))
lg$set_propagate(FALSE)

lg$info("JSON naturally ", field = "custom")
lg$info("supports custom", numbers = 1:3)
lg$info("log fields", use = "JSON")

```

JSON is easy to parse and analyse with R. lgr provides the function
`read_json_lines()` that can be used to read JSON log files, but you can also
use AppenderJson's `$data` binding for an even more convenient method to
read the logfile.

```{r eval = FALSE}
lg$appenders$json$data
# same as 
read_json_lines(tf)
```
```{r echo = FALSE}
lg$appenders$json$data
```

JSON is also human readable, though this vignette does not transport that fact 
very well because of the lack of horizontal space.
```{r eval = FALSE}
lg$appenders$json$show()
# same as
cat(readLines(tf), sep = "\n")
```
```{r echo = FALSE}
lg$appenders$json$show()
```
```{r}
# cleanup
lg$config(NULL)
unlink(tf)
```



## Logging to rotating files

lgr can also log to rotating files. The following example logs to a file that
is reset and backed-up once it reaches a size of 10kb. Only the last 5 backups
of the logfile are kept.

```{r}
# install.packages("rotor")
tf <- tempfile(fileext = ".log")

lg <- get_logger("test")$
  set_propagate(FALSE)$
  set_appenders(list(rotating = AppenderFileRotating$new(
    file = tf, 
    size = "10 kb",
    max_backups = 5))
  )

for (i in 1:100) lg$info(paste(LETTERS, sep = "-"))

# display info on the backups of tf
lg$appenders$rotating$backups

# manually delete all backups
invisible(lg$appenders$rotating$prune(0))
lg$appenders$rotating$backups

#cleanup
unlink(tf)
```



## Logger hierarchies  {#examples-hierarchy}

The most common use cases for creating a new Logger rather than just using the
root Logger is if you create a Package that should contain logging. This
way you can have separate Appenders (e.g logfiles) and thresholds for each
package. 

```{r}
# The logger name should be the same as the package name
tf <- tempfile()
lg <- get_logger("mypackage")
lg$add_appender(AppenderFile$new(tf))  
```

The `print()` method for Loggers gives a nice overview of the newly created
Logger:

```{r}
print(lg)
```

This tells us that `lg` logs all events of at least level `info`. It does 
have a single (unnamed) Appender that logs to a temporary file, and dispatches 
all LogEvents it creates to the Appenders of the root Logger (ignoring the 
threshold and filters of the root Logger, but not of its Appenders).

We can use `lg$fatal()`, `lg$info()`, etc.. to log messages with this Logger:
```{r}
lg$info("A test message for lg")
```

If we do not want `lg` to dispatch to the root Logger, we can set 
`propagate` to `FALSE`.
```{r}
lg$set_propagate(FALSE)
```
When we take a look at the Logger again, we now see that it does not inherit
any Appenders anymore
```{r}
print(lg)
```

Consequently, `lg` no longer outputs log messages to he console
```{r}
lg$info("Nothing to see here")
```
```{r}
# cleanup
lg$config(NULL)
unlink(tf)
```


## Buffered logging

The main purpose of AppenderBuffer is to retain LogEvents in memory and write
them to destinations at a later point in time, e.g. when the Buffer is full and
needs to be flushed. For example, if you log to a 
remote database you can postpone this costly operation until after your analysis
is finished.

By setting a [filter](#thresholds) as a custom `$should_flush()` method for an 
AppenderBuffer, you can define more complex conditions to trigger flushing. 
For example, the will output the last 5 LogEvents that happened before an 
`error` occurred.

```{r}
lg <- get_logger("buffer")

lg$
  set_threshold(NA)$
  set_propagate(FALSE)$
  set_appenders(
    AppenderBuffer$new(
    threshold = NA,
    buffer_size = 5, # can hold 5 events, the 6th will trigger flushing
    flush_on_exit = FALSE,
    flush_on_rotate = FALSE,
    flush_threshold = "error",
    appenders = AppenderConsole$new(threshold = NA)
  ))

# The for loop below stores 8 log events in the Buffer
for (nm in month.name[1:8]) lg$debug("%s", nm)

# An event of level 'error' or 'fatal' triggers flushing of the buffer
lg$error("But the days grow short when you reach September")
```


## Logging to databases

Logging to databases is simple, though a few aspects can be tricky to
configure based on the backend used. For performance reasons database inserts
are buffered by default. This works exactly identical as described above for
AppenderBuffer. If you want to write each LogEvent directly to the database,
just set the buffer size to `0`. As of lgr 0.4.0, database appenders are
part of the **lgrExtra** package that has to be installed separately.
**Database logging is still somewhat experimental**.

```{r, eval = FALSE}
# install.packages("RSQLite")
# install.packages("lgrExtra")
lg <- get_logger("db_logger")
lg$
  set_propagate(FALSE)$
  add_appender(
    name = "db", 
    lgrExtra::AppenderDbi$new(
      conn = DBI::dbConnect(RSQLite::SQLite()),
      table = "log",
      buffer_size = 2L
    )
  )

lg$info("Logging to databases uses a buffer")
lg$info("As the buffer size is 2, no insert took place till now")
lg$appenders$db$show()

lg$info("Now as the buffer is rotated, all events are output to the db")
lg$appenders$db$show()
```


## Adding default extra fields to messages

By abusing Filters, lgr can modify LogEvents as they are processed. One example
for when this is useful is assigning a grouping identifier to a series of log 
calls.

```{r}
# setup an example function
clean   <- function() lgr$info("cleaning data")
process <- function() lgr$info("processing data")
output  <- function() lgr$info("outputing data")

analyze <- function(){
  clean()
  process()
  output()
}
```

`with_log_value()` provides a convenient wrapper to inject values into log 
calls.
```{r eval = FALSE}
with_log_value(
  list(dataset_id = "dataset1"), 
  analyze()
)
```

An alternative way to achieve the same is to use one of the preconfigured 
Filters that come with lgr. This approach is more more comfortable for 
use within functions.
```{r eval = FALSE}
analyze <- function(id = "dataset1"){
  lgr$add_filter(FilterInject$new(dataset_id = id), name = "inject")
  on.exit(lgr$remove_filter("inject"))
  
  clean()
  process()
  output()
}
analyze()
```
The result is the same in both cases:
```{r, echo = FALSE}
with_log_value(
  list(dataset_id = "dataset1"), 
  analyze()
)
```

You can use `with_log_level()` and `FilterForceLevel` in a similar fashion to
modify the log level of events conveniently.


## Temporarily disable logging

Temporary disabling logging for portions of code is straight forward and easy 
with lgr: 

```{r}
without_logging({
  lgr$warn("Oh Yeah?")
  lgr$fatal("Oh No")
})
```



## Adding a custom logger to a package

If you are a package author, it is good practice to define a separate logger
for your package. This gives users the ability to easily enable/disable 
logging on a per-package basis. Loggers must be initialized in the packages
.onLoad hook. You can do this by adding the following code to any `.R` file 
inside the `R/` directory of your package:

```{r}
# mypackage/R/mypackage-package.R
.onLoad <- function(...){
  assign(
    "lg",  # the recommended name for a logger object
    lgr::get_logger(name = "mypackage"),  # should be the same as the package name
    envir = parent.env(environment())
  )
}

```

You can also just use `lgr::use_logger()` to generate the appropriate code for 
your package automatically.

After you set this up you can use `lg$fatal()`, `lg$info()`, etc... 
inside your package. You do not have to define any appenders, since all log 
events will get redirected to the root Logger (see [Inheritance](#hierarchy)). 


## Creating a Layout that mimics NodeJS Winston logstash

see https://github.com/s-fleck/lgr/issues/29


# References

[Python Logging](https://docs.python.org/3/library/logging.html)

[Eric Stenbock: The True Story of A Vampire](https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0606601h.html)
