Hi,

for the moment rest-client has a very ad-hockish logging mechanism, see
http://github.com/archiloque/rest-client/blob/1.2.0/lib/restclient/request.rb#L254

how it currently works:
- you can specify a log by calling RestClient.log=
- if the log is 'stdout', the log will be done to stdout
- same for stderr
- anything else will be used as a filename and each logs will be
appened to this file
- or (for quick debugging), you can set ENV['RESTCLIENT_LOG'] (with
the same values) which will take precedence on RestClient.log

These features aren't currently used by the depending frameworks I
know of and aren't displayed on the project' documentation.

My issue : I (and ngw) think the current code is a hack and would like
the library to use a stdlib Logger so it would work more nicely with
calling code.

So can you tell me if you use the existing features and your opinion
about them ?

Possible solutions:
- many of you use the existing code, then I'll add the logger as
another specific case
- some of you use the existing code but you agree it's a hack, then I
could move the existing code in an external file as a monkey patch (so
including the file would make the code work the same)
- nobody use it exept for debugging and you all agree a logger is a no
brainer

A.

I definitely agree that the logger could use some attention. My only
request would be to preserve the ability to activate it with an
environment variable - I use this ALL the time and it is incredibly
useful for introspecting command-line tools that use RestClient.
(e.g. heroku, taps, ey-flex)

For example:

$ RESTCLIENT_LOG=stdout heroku list
RestClient.get "https://api.heroku.com/apps",
"User-Agent"=>"heroku-gem/1.6.0", "X-Heroku-API-Version"=>"2"
# => 200 OK | application/xml 3487 bytes

I also think it's worth preserving the format, which is valid ruby
code. There's a great segment about why this is useful in James
Edward Grey's talk from Mountainwest Rubyconf:

http://mwrc2009.confreaks.com/13-mar-2009-10-30-littlebigruby-james-edward-grey-ii.html

The segment on restclient starts at 6:45, and he talks about logging at 10:25.

Adam

I definitely agree that the logger could use some attention. My only
request would be to preserve the ability to activate it with an
environment variable - I use this ALL the time and it is incredibly
useful for introspecting command-line tools that use RestClient.
(e.g. heroku, taps, ey-flex)

For example:

$ RESTCLIENT_LOG=stdout heroku list
RestClient.get "https://api.heroku.com/apps",
"User-Agent"=>"heroku-gem/1.6.0", "X-Heroku-API-Version"=>"2"
# => 200 OK | application/xml 3487 bytes

I also think it's worth preserving the format, which is valid ruby
code. There's a great segment about why this is useful in James
Edward Grey's talk from Mountainwest Rubyconf:

http://mwrc2009.confreaks.com/13-mar-2009-10-30-littlebigruby-james-edward-grey-ii.html

The segment on restclient starts at 6:45, and he talks about logging at
10:25.

I forgot about the embedding case for the environment, and I agree about
the format.

A.

Hi,

+1
I would go with the backwards compatible version. The recommended way
to do it would be:
RestClient.log = Logger.new(STDOUT, ...)
and we would have a specific case to handle string values ('stdout',
'stderr', 'filename') and create the corresponding logger objects.

Old clients would still work without any change (I think this is very
important since I use the logging facility quite often in my own
clients), and new/updated clients would be able to start using a
"real" logging facility.
To encourage the move to the new system, we may display deprecation
warnings (displayed as ruby comments) when a string is passed as an
argument to the RestClient.log= function.

Cyril