Express Morgan not writing logs to file or STDOUT

Question

I have an Express application that I would like to add logging to. I installed Morgan and set up the middleware in the file which manages my API calls:

/src/api/calls.js

the morgan middleware is set up to send the logging results to a file: errors.txt

    var express = require('express'),
        app = express(),
        dbConfig = require('../config/db.config'),
        connectToMongo = require('./db.js'),
        bodyParser = require("body-parser"),
        ObjectId = require('mongodb').ObjectID,
        morgan = require('morgan'),
        fs = require('fs'),
        Sb;

    //middleware
    var accessLogStream = fs.createWriteStream('../sample/errors.txt', {flags: 'a'})
    app.use(morgan('combined',  {stream: accessLogStream}));

    app.use(function(req, res, next) {
      res.header("Access-Control-Allow-Origin", "*");
      res.header("Access-Control-Allow-Headers", "Origin, X-Requested-With, Content-Type, Accept");
      next();
    });
    app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: true }));

module.exports = function apiRoutes(app) {
  app.get("/v1/api/sample/:call", function(req, res, next) {
     //route db calls and code here
  });
}

/app.js

the api routes are required into the app.js file and the apiRoutes function is called:

var express = require('express');
var app = express();
var config = require('./src/config/server.config');
//api and server
var http = require('http');
var server = new http.Server(app);

//load the api calls for the server
var apiRoutes = require('./src/api/calls.js');
apiRoutes(app);

the problem is - I'm not getting any logging data written into my errors.txt file or even in the console when I change the code to simply STDOUT. What am I missing here?

score 13 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 10 '16 at 00:11

I figured it out- the logging code needed to be located in the app.js file, not in the file that holds the api calls. I knew the logging code needed to be the first piece of middleware, but I didn't realize it needed to be right after the new instance of the server is instantiated.

var express = require('express'),
    app = express(),
    config = require('./src/config/server.config'),
    morgan = require('morgan'),
    fs = require('fs'),
//api and server
    http = require('http'),
    server = new http.Server(app); 

//set up the logger
var accessLogStream = fs.createWriteStream(__dirname + '/access.log', {flags: 'a'})
app.use(morgan('combined',  {"stream": accessLogStream}));


//load the api calls for the server
var apiRoutes = require('./src/api/calls.js');
apiRoutes(app);

That is absolutely correct. I got the same issue and your solution saves my day. Thanks! — shaosh, Jul 12 '16 at 09:30
What if you had `app.use(morgan('combined', {"stream": accessLogStream}));` _before_ `new http.Server(app); `? — cogitoergosum, Oct 07 '18 at 07:18

knee-cola · Answer 2 · 2020-12-24T13:11:30.647

In case you are running/debugging your Node code from VS Code, then this problem is caused by VS Code.

Morgan writes to console via process.stdout.write, which is not supported by VS Code's Debug Console. The Debug Console will show only things written via console.log.

There are two ways to fix this. Both include adding entires to launch.json:

first solution - add "console": "integratedTerminal"
second solution - add "outputCapture": "std" (will not respect log colors)

I found this solutions here:

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 18 '19 at 12:51

1

when using express, it works for me

app.use(morgan('dev'));

answered Dec 18 '19 at 12:51

Ashad Nasim

2,511
21
37

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 03 '20 at 08:59

In my case, when I moved the following code to the start of the app.js file, then it started working:

app.use(logger('combined'));
app.use(logger('common', {
    stream: fs.createWriteStream(__dirname + '/access.log', {flags: 'a'})
}));

For some reason, when this was at the beginning of the file:

app.use(logger('combined'));

And this was at the end:

app.use(logger('common', {
    stream: fs.createWriteStream(__dirname + '/access.log', {flags: 'a'})
}));

Then it didn't work. I didn't figure out why.

The solution worked for me, Thanks!! But I didn't understand the reason behind it — Nikhil Jadhav, Jul 09 '22 at 20:50

Express Morgan not writing logs to file or STDOUT

4 Answers4

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