Structured logging.
slog is a library for capturing structured log information. In contrast to "traditional" logging libraries, slog:
- captures a Context for each event
- captures arbitrary key-value metadata on each log event
slog forwards messages to log by default. But you probably want to write a custom output to make use of the context and metadata. At Monzo, slog captures events both on a per-service and a per-request basis (using the context information) and sends them to a centralised logging system. This lets us view all the logs for a given request across all the micro-services it touches.
Internally at Monzo, we recommend that users always prefer structured logging where possible. An example of using slog for this would be:
slog.Info(ctx, "Loading widget", map[string]interface{}{
"stage": "reticulating splines",
})slog also provides a shorthand for capturing errors in the form of:
slog.Error(ctx, "Failed to load widget", err)You may also add metadata to errors captured this way:
slog.Error(ctx, "Failed to load widget", err, map[string]interface{}{
"user_id": 42,
})Slog will pick up the first error it finds in the metadata and make it available in event.Error.
For backwards-compatibility, slog accepts metadata in the form of map[string]string.
It also accepts format parameters in the style of Printf:
stage := "reticulating splines"
slog.Info(ctx, "Loading widget at stage: %s", stage)