RedisSyslog

RedisSyslog is a simple ruby gem that allows ruby to log directly to redis in a high performance environment. We do rely on redis-rb, so go grab a copy if you haven't already! We originally wrote for Fittr® because our remote scripts needed to be easily checked to see if they were working or not. We now deploy RedisSyslog as a general purpose logging utility where our many services are able to concurrently log to.

Let's get you started real quick.

1. Include the gem in your Gemfile

   source "https://rubygems.org"
   gem 'redis_syslog'
   

2. Initalize an object. Or as many as you'd like! Thread safety, hurray!

   #Create a redis-rb intsance
   @redis = Redis.new
   

Create an instance of RedisSyslog

@logger = RedisSyslog.new @redis

3. Profit
 ```ruby
#Write a new entry to the com.bar.sobriety namespace log
@logger.write "com.bar.sobriety", "Ordered a beer"
@logger.write "com.bar.sobriety", "Hiccup!"

#Get last 2 entries
puts @logger.tail "com.bar.sobriety", 2
>[{:index => 1, :timestamp=>2014-1027 18:48:28 -0400, :message => "Hiccup!"},
   {:index => 0, :timestamp=>2014-1027 18:48:28 -0400, :message => "Ordered a beer"}]

#View all namespaces used
puts @logger.namespaces ["com.bar.sobriety"]

#Drop this namespace
@logger.delete "com.bar.sobriety"

#Delete all data including indexes
@logger.drop_all

There are no limits on the number of logs (namespaces) you can have.

How is it stored?

Each namespace (i.e. each log name) uses the one key with a redis sorted set. redis_syslog://#{namespace}
Then, we have one index key which contains an unsorted set of keys. redis_syslog://namespaces

For each entry in the sorted set of some namespace, we follow the simple protocol.

 ###########################################################################
 #index     - Number that should be monotonically increasing for each entry
 #timestamp - A time in seconds from unix epoch
 #message   - Your message
 ###########################################################################
 @encoded_message = "#{index}\n#{timestamp}\n#{message}"