[asterisk-app-dev] ARI method of posting log messages to Asterisk

[Mark Michelson]

On 10/16/2013 01:49 PM, Mark Michelson wrote:
> Hey folks,
>
> Have a look at ASTERISK-22699 [1]
>
> The issue pertains to allowing for ARI to write content to Asterisk's 
> logs. I'd like to propose my ideas for how logging from ARI could be 
> done. First, let's consider what an Asterisk log message looks like:
>
> [Oct 16 17:20:23] ERROR[20023] foo.c:666 I AM ERROR.
>
> The message consists of 6 parts: the timestamp, the level, the thread 
> ID, the file name, the line number, and the message. Of these, the 
> timestamp and thread ID should be filled in by Asterisk. The other 
> four parts could potentially be fed into Asterisk by an ARI application.
>
> Moving on to the ARI method for logging to the Asterisk log, I think 
> it should be something like:
>
> POST /asterisk/logMessage
>
> At a minimum, the parameters for this would be
>
> level: One of the Asterisk log levels (such as "error", "warning", 
> "debug", etc.)
> message: The string to print to the log
>
> The minimum is nice in that it keeps the API call simple, but it has 
> the downside of making your messages look like this:
>
> [Oct 16 17:20:23] WARNING[20023] ?:0 You're tearing me apart, Lisa!
>
> We could expand the method a bit by adding in a couple more parameters:
>
> fileName: The file name to place in the log message.
> lineNumber: The line number to place in the log message.
>
> This way, the previous log message would look like this instead:
>
> [Oct 16 17:20:23] WARNING[20023] cool_app.py:143 You're tearing me 
> apart, Lisa!
>
> Expanding further, consider that log levels such as debug and verbose 
> also have an additional integer value associated with them so that 
> they are only printed depending on what you've set core debug or core 
> verbose to. We could just make the assumption that all verbose and 
> debug messages logged through ARI have a 0 for this value, or this 
> integer value could be exposed as part of the ARI method as well.
>
> So what do you thing of this proposal? What degree of control would 
> you prefer to have for writing log messages to Asterisk's logger?
>
>
> As a second discussion, consider that Asterisk, since 1.8 I believe, 
> has had the concept of dynamic log levels. What this means is that a 
> module can register a log level called "FOO" for instance, and log 
> messages directed at that level would look like:
>
> [Oct 16 17:20:23] FOO[20023] bar.c:717 They're eating her! And then 
> they're going to eat me! OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!
>
> This could be a useful concept for ARI in one of two possible ways.
>
> 1) The ARI implementation in Asterisk could register a log level at 
> startup (called "ARI" possibly) that ARI app developers could write to 
> in order to keep their messages at a different level from any of the 
> other messages in the system.
>
> 2) We could expose an ARI call that would allow app developers to 
> create their own dynamic log levels on the fly. For instance, you 
> could have
>
> POST /asterisk/logLevel
>
> with the parameter
>
> level: The name of the level to register to Asterisk
>
> This way you could record different log messages at different dynamic 
> log levels if you desired.
>
> Would dynamic log levels be useful for you in your applications? If 
> so, would you prefer to have a dedicated "ARI" level to write to or 
> would you prefer the ability to create your own levels to write to?


I realized I forgot to include the link in the initial post:

[1] https://issues.asterisk.org/jira/browse/ASTERISK-22699