---
title: "Getting Started"
output: rmarkdown::html_vignette
vignette: >
  %\VignetteIndexEntry{getting-started}
  %\VignetteEngine{knitr::rmarkdown}
  %\VignetteEncoding{UTF-8}
---

```{r, include = FALSE}
knitr::opts_chunk$set(
  collapse = TRUE,
  comment = "#>"
)
```

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

`loggit` is an easy-to-use, yet powerful, [`ndjson`](https://github.com/ndjson)
logger. It is very fast, has zero external dependencies, and can be as
straightforward or as integral as you want to make it.

R has a selection of built-in functions for handling different *exceptions*, or
special cases where diagnostic messages are provided, and/or function execution
is halted because of an error. However, R itself provides nothing to record this
diagnostic post-hoc; useRs are left with what is printed to the console as their
only means of analyzing the what-went-wrong of their code. There are some
slightly hacky ways of capturing this console output, such as `sink`ing to a
text file, repetitively `cat`ing identical exception messages that are passed to
existing handler calls, etc. But there are two main issues with these
approaches:

1.  The console output is not at all easy to parse, so that a user can quickly
    identify the causes of failure without manually scanning through it

2.  Even if the user tries to structure a text file output, they would likely
    have to ensure consistency in that output across all their work, and there
    is still the issue of parsing that text file into a familiar, usable format

Enter: [JSON](https://www.json.org/)

For those unaware: JSON is a lightweight, portable (standardized) data format
that is easy to read and write by both humans and machines. An excerpt from the
introduction of the JSON link above:

>JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight data-interchange format. It
is easy for humans to read and write. It is easy for machines to parse and
generate. It is based on a subset of the JavaScript Programming Language,
Standard ECMA-262 3rd Edition - December 1999. JSON is a text format that is
completely language independent but uses conventions that are familiar to
programmers of the C-family of languages, including C, C++, C\#, Java,
JavaScript, Perl, Python, and many others. These properties make JSON an ideal
data-interchange language.

Basically, you can think of JSON objects like you would think of `list`s in R: a
set of named key-value pairs. Since R `list`s are subsets of the `data.frame`
class, logs written by `loggit` are easily retrievable as data frames -- this
means you can analyze your log data, *right from your R code!*

What `loggit` does a bit differently is write logs as *newline-delimited JSON*
(`ndsjon`). Instead of a JSON file that looks like this:

```
[
  {
    "key1": "value1"
  },
  {
    "key2": "value2"
  }
]
```

`loggit`'s logs containing the same data will instead put each object on its own
line:

```
{"key1": "value1"}
{"key2": "value2"}
```

This makes the log entries themselves exhibit very fast disk write speeds, while
still being machine-parsable, human-readable, and ideal for log stream
collection systems (like the `stdout` of your terminal, or a container in Docker
or Kubernetes).

How to Use `loggit`
-------------------

To write a log entry using `loggit` via its exception handlers, you just load
`loggit`, set its log file location, and use the same handlers you always do:

```{r handlers_0, eval = FALSE}
library(loggit)

set_logfile("/path/to/my/log/directory/loggit.log") # loggit enforces no specific file extension
```
```{r handlers}
message("This is a message")
warning("This is a warning")
# stop("This is a critical error, so I'm not actually going to run it in this vignette")
```

You can see that the handlers will pring both the `loggit`-generated log entry,
as well as their base default output. To only have the JSON print, wrap the call
in the appropriate suppressor (i.e. `suppressMessages()` or
`suppressWarnings()`). To only have the base text printed, pass `echo = FALSE`
to the handler.

And... that's it! You've introduced human-readable, machine-parsable logging
into your workflow!

However, surely you want more control over your logs.

Behind the scenes, `loggit`'s core function, also called `loggit()`, is executed
right before the base handlers with some sane defaults. However, the `loggit()`
function is also exported for use by the developer:

```{r loggit_func}
loggit("INFO", "This is also a message")
loggit("WARN", "This is also a warning")
loggit("ERROR", "This is an error, but it won't stop your code from running like `stop()` does")
```

*"But why wouldn't I just use the handlers instead?"*

Because `loggit()` exposes much greater flexibility to the user, by way of
*custom fields*.

```{r custom_fields}
loggit(
  "INFO",
  "This is a message",
  but_maybe = "you want more fields?",
  sure = "why not?",
  like = 2,
  or = 10,
  what = "ever"
)
```

Since JSON is considered *semi-structured data* (sometimes called
"schema-on-read"), you can log any custom fields you like, as *inconsistently*
as you like. It all just ends up as text in a file, with no column structure to
worry about.

So, `loggit`'s log format is a special type of JSON. JSON objects are like
`list`s -- and so are `data.frames`. To allow for the most flexibility, the
`read_logs()` function is available to you, which reads in the currently-set log
file as a data frame:

```{r read_logs}
read_logs()
```

Notice that `read_logs()` handles any columnar inconsistencies as mentioned
above. If `read_logs()` finds a field that other entries don't have, it maps it
to an empty string for that log entry. This was chosen over `NA`s to allow for
consistency on re-write. You can, however, just replace all the empty strings
with `NA` after read, if you want to.

You can also pass a file path to `read_logs()`, and read that `loggit` log file
instead.

The other helpful utilities are as follows:

- You can control the format of the timestamp in the logs; it defaults to ISO
  format `"%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%z"`, but you may set it yourself using
  `set_timestamp_format()`. Note that this format is ultimately passed to
  `format.Date()`, so the supplied format needs to be valid.
- You can control the output name & location of the log file using
  `set_logfile(logfile)`. Similarly, you can retrieve the location of the
  current log file using `get_logfile()`.

Things to keep in mind
----------------------

- `loggit` will default to writing to an R temporary directory. As per CRAN
  policies, ***a package cannot write*** to a user's "home filespace" without
  approval. Therefore, you need to set the log file before any logs are written
  to disk, using `set_logfile(logfile)` (I recommend in your working directory,
  and naming it "loggit.log"). If you are using loggit in your own package, you
  can wrap this in a call to `.onLoad()`, so that logging is set on package
  load. If not, then make the set call as soon as possible (e.g. at the top of
  your script(s), right after your calls to `library()`); otherwise, no logs
  will be written to persistent storage!

.
