Winston for application logging in Express - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Winston for application logging

📖 Scenario: You are building a simple Express.js server. You want to add logging to track requests and errors clearly. Using Winston, a popular logging library, will help you keep logs organized and easy to read.

🎯 Goal: Set up Winston logging in an Express.js app to log messages of different levels and print a test log message.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a Winston logger with Console transport

Set the log level to 'info'

Log a test message using the logger

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Logging helps developers track what happens in their apps. Winston is a popular tool to organize logs by level and destination.

💼 Career

Knowing how to set up logging with Winston is a key skill for backend developers and DevOps engineers to monitor and debug applications.

1

Setup Express app and import Winston

Create a new Express app by importing express and winston. Then create an Express app instance called app.

Express

const express = require('express');
const winston = require('winston');

const app = express();
// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use require('express') and require('winston') to import the modules. Then call express() to create the app.

2

Create a Winston logger with Console transport

Create a Winston logger called logger using winston.createLogger. Add a Console transport with log level set to 'info'.

Express

const express = require('express');
const winston = require('winston');

const app = express();

// Create a Winston logger with Console transport and level 'info'
// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use winston.createLogger with an object that has level: 'info' and a transports array containing new winston.transports.Console().

3

Log a test info message

Use the logger to log an info message with the text 'Server started successfully'.

Express

const express = require('express');
const winston = require('winston');

const app = express();

const logger = winston.createLogger({
  level: 'info',
  transports: [
    new winston.transports.Console()
  ]
});

// Log an info message 'Server started successfully'
// Your code here

Need a hint?

Call logger.info with the string 'Server started successfully'.

4

Print the log output by running the app

Run the app and observe the console output. Use console.log to print 'Logging test complete' after the log message.

Express

const express = require('express');
const winston = require('winston');

const app = express();

const logger = winston.createLogger({
  level: 'info',
  transports: [
    new winston.transports.Console()
  ]
});

logger.info('Server started successfully');

// Print 'Logging test complete' to console
// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use console.log('Logging test complete') to print the final message.