Setting up logger options

i was called the other day about one of my past projects server going down because it's production log exceeded 2GB.
regularly, there is a cron job to cycle the log file and prevent such joyous occasions, but for some reason it didn't happen. so i decided to read a little bit about the Logger class in Rails and see if it has some magic for me yet.

in order to replace the log file path (and/or name) use the following syntax in environment.rb:

1. Rails::Initializer.run do |config|  
2.   config.logger = Logger.new(File.dirname(__FILE__) + "/../log/#{RAILS_ENV}.log")  
3. end  

The actual cure for my problem came when i found the option to prevent the logger file from exceeding a pre-defined limit.

1. config.logger = Logger.new(File.dirname(__FILE__) + "/../log/#{RAILS_ENV}.log", 1, 2*1024*1024)  

and a little extra for creating a brand new log file for each day.

1. config.logger = Logger.new(File.dirname(__FILE__) + "/../log/#{RAILS_ENV}.log", "daily")  

i suggest reading even more on the rails development browser

Customize Logger message format

I Hate these long, frustrating long messages coming out on me when i look at the log. They are long, and needed a refreshing change for my opinion.

here is what i found:
There is a method which is responsible for the actual STDOUT printing for the log file, it's called Logger#format_message. I decided to overrun it in a more pretty way.

I created a /lib library called logger_format.rb and required it in environment.rb,

class Logger  
  def format_message(level, time, progname, msg)  
    "#{time.to_s(:long)} -- #{msg}\n"  
  end    
end  

for example.
try it out and feel free to modify the output structure at will.