logmailer

Log mailer for (Node) JS. Aggregate your log/error mail from all over your app and send it when you want.

logmailer uses emailjs

Please see here npmjs.com/package/emailjs! Without emailjs logmailer would not exist. Special thanks/credits to eleith!

Purpose

Think of the following scenario: There are several events in your app and you want to be noticed about them via email. Well, if you have one notification, then you have one email. That's fine. But what if you have lots of notifications over runtime, thrown by functions scattered all over your app? Then you would have to aggregate all those notifications to a (log) file and send it when your app run is finished. Lots of loggers are able to write into files. But what if you want to have a well formatted html email? Then you can use logmailer. :)

News

Nov 09, 2019 I am happy to announce that logmailer is production ready. 🎉 Logmailer proofed itself over the last 3 or 4 months within the context of my current side project, the Globallytics Fund No. 1, which is a machine learning based fund. I use logmailer in several scripts running on our server. It is very stable and there weren't any issues all this time.

Sep 29, 2019 I just wrote an article about logmailer. You can find it on Medium and Dev.to.

Jun 28, 2020 No news about the code but still using logmailer in heavy production and it works and works and works. :) Logmailer has generated and sent over 18.000 mails now during the first year of our ML based stock fund Globallytics Fund No. 1. Logmailer is an irreplacable tool for us. We get notified on errors and also have a kind of documentation for the BAFIN like "hey, we know it and we immediately take action if something goes wrong".

Features (over time)

• 0.0.3
  • with logmailer you can add content to your log mail from anywhere
  • use as much html & css as you want (as long as it can be handled by email clients)
  • the aggregated mail can be sent at the end of your app run, when your app crashes, or just when you need it
  • format your objects or arrays of objects as beautiful html tables
• 0.1.0
  • your mail is separated in chapters which are stacked on each other e.g. "Summary" -> "Errors" -> "Warnings" -> "Logs" (StandardChapters)
  • you can adjust which mail recipient can see which chapters, e.g. the manager is only allowed to see the (custom) chapter "Management Summary"
  • you can adjust that a specific mail recipient only gets an email if a certain chapter is not empty, e.g. I only want to receive an email personally if there is at least one error in the "Errors" chapter
• 1.0
  • just an announcement, that logmailer is production ready! no code changes! you can update without any problems
• ideas for the future
  • logmailer runs in a separate process which is independent to the original process
  • I would be happy to read your ideas

Bug fixes (over time)

None

Installing

Using npm:

$ npm install logmailer

How to use

Set up the logmailer (initially)

Create a file to create and configure the logmailer (e.g. logmailer.js). Make sure to export the logmailer itself and your chapters.

logmailer.js

    let { logmailer, Recipient, Chapter, StandardChapters } = require("logmailer");
    // import { logmailer, Recipient, Chapter, StandardChapters } from "logmailer";

    // the order in this object is the order of the chapters in the email
    let chapters = {
        summary: StandardChapters.Summary,
        ffOnly: new Chapter("Firefighter only", false, "DeepPink"),
        managerOnly: new Chapter("Manager only", false, "DarkSlateBlue"),
        errors: StandardChapters.Errors,
        logs: StandardChapters.Logs
    }

    logmailer.create({
        appName: "My App",
        mailAlias: "[email protected]",
        client: {
            host: "smtp.googlemail.com",
            user: "user",
            password: "password",
            ssl: true
        },
        recipients: [
            "[email protected]", // receives everything

            // receives email if the "managerOnly" chapter is not empty
            // receives only the chapter "managerOnly"
            new Recipient("[email protected]", [chapters.managerOnly], [chapters.managerOnly]),

            // receives email if the "ffOnly" chapter is not empty
            // receives only the chapters "ffOnly" and "errors"
            new Recipient("[email protected]", [chapters.ffOnly], [chapters.summary, chapters.ffOnly, chapters.errors]),
        ],
        chapters: chapters
    })

    module.exports.logmail = chapters;
    module.exports.logmailer = logmailer;

Chapter class

Chapter is a single chapter object

let Chapter: new (name: string, hasCount?: boolean, color?: string) => Chapter

Params:

• @param name — chapters name e.g. "Summary"
• @param hasCount — (optional, default is false) set to true if you want to count how often you added content to the chapter (good for errors or warnings)
• @param color — (optional, default is "black") use colors to colorize headlines (you can use hex, rgb, rgba, color codes etc. but it is important that the email client can display the color correctly)

Recipient class

Recipient a single recipient object

let Recipient: new (emailAddress: string, getsEmailOnlyIfChaptersNotEmpty?: Chapter[], canOnlySeeChapters?: Chapter[]) => Recipient

Params:

• @param emailAddress
• @param getsEmailOnlyIfChaptersNotEmpty — (optional) array of chapters e.g. [chapters.errors], the recipient will get the email only if there is at least 1 logged error
• @param canOnlySeeChapters — (optional) array of chapters e.g. [chapters.summary, chapters.errors], the recipient can only see the summary and the logged errors

Use the logmailer

In all your other files you can simply import your chapters and the logmailer and use them.

myapp.js

    let { logmailer, logmail } = require("./logmailer");
    // import { logmailer, logmail } from "./logmailer";

    logmail.summary.add("Starting time", `Starting app run now: ${new Date().toISOString()}`);

    // ..

    logmail.errors.add("Error heading", "Info about error");
    logmail.errors.add(null, "Further info about error");
    logmail.errors.add(null, "Further info about error");

    // ..

    logmail.managerOnly.add("Info for the manager heading", "Info for the manager");
    logmail.managerOnly.add(null, "Further info for the manager");
    logmail.managerOnly.add(null, "Further info for the manager");

    // ..

    logmail.ffOnly.add("Info for the firefighter heading", "Instructions for the firefighter");
    logmail.ffOnly.add(null, "Further instructions");
    logmail.ffOnly.add(null, "Further instructions");

Send the mail

    logmailer.sendMail(err => {
        if (err) {
            console.log("error while sending", err);
        } else {
            console.log("mail sent successfully");
        }
    })

Reset your chapters

    logmail.errors.reset();
    logmail.warnings.reset();

Format objects or arrays of objects as html tables

    let object = {
        "row1, col1": "row1, col2",
        "row2, col1": "row2, col2",
        "row3, col1": {
            "row3.1, col2.1": "row3.1, col2.2",
            "row3.2, col2.1": "row3.2, col2.2"
        }
    }

    logmail.logs.add("My object as a html table", logmailer.convertObjectToHTMLTable(object));

    let arrayOfObjects = [object, object];

    logmail.logs.add("My object array as a html table", logmailer.convertObjectArrayToHTMLTable(arrayOfObjects));

Nice solution for Node JS

index.js or server.js

    process.on('uncaughtException', function (err) {
        logmail.errors.add("Uncaught exception", `&#9658; Error message: ${err.message}<br/>Error stack: ${err.stack}`);
    });

    process.on('unhandledRejection', function (err) {
        logmail.errors.add("Unhandled rejection", `&#9658; Error message: ${err.message}<br/>Error stack: ${err.stack}`);
        unplannedExit("rejection error");
    })

    function unplannedExit(info) {
        logmail.errors.add("Unnormal exit:", `&#9658; Info: ${info}`);
        logmail.summary.add("Ending time", `Ending app run now: ${new Date().toISOString()}`);
        logmailer.sendMail(err => {
            if (err) {
                console.log("error while sending", err);
            } else {
                console.log("mail sent successfully");
            }
            process.exit();
        });
    }

    process.on('beforeExit', function (exitCode) {
        unplannedExit(exitCode);
    })

    process.on("SIGTERM", function (signal) {
        unplannedExit(signal);
    })

    process.on("SIGINT", function (signal) {
        unplannedExit(signal);
    })

    // ..

Screenshots

Managers view

Firefighters view

Full view (all chapters)

License

MIT