/logging-best-practices

name: logging-best-practices
description: Structured logging with proper levels, context, PII handling, centralized aggregation. Use for application logging, log management integration, distributed tracing, or encountering log bloat, PII exposure, missing context errors.
license: MIT

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](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