Log messages written in order?

Is it possible to have winston log its messages to a transport in order? It’s hard to read log files that aren’t sequential.

For example, I have a log output that included a date/time with milliseconds. (See below)

Is there a way to specify that each of the log messages be written in the order they occur? Thanks.

2016-02-25 21:34:07.671 INFO  ...
2016-02-25 21:34:07.692 INFO  ...
2016-02-25 21:34:07.690 DEBUG  ...
2016-02-25 21:34:07.692 INFO  ...
2016-02-25 21:34:07.691 DEBUG  ...
2016-02-25 21:34:07.692 DEBUG  ...
2016-02-25 21:34:07.692 DEBUG  ...

NB: The code that generates the timestamps is at: https://github.com/winstonjs/winston/issues/802

[zamnuts]

@richb-hanover This is an issue with the default logging levels and their relationship with stdout and stderr. The culprit is: https://github.com/winstonjs/winston/blob/2.2.0/lib/winston/transports/console.js#L118-L122 and the associated option is declared at: https://github.com/winstonjs/winston/blob/2.2.0/lib/winston/transports/console.js#L34

The default stderr log levels are error and debug (defined as ['error','debug']), all other levels are routed to stdout. On the console, stdout and stderr are consolidated in the viewed output; these are separate output streams hence why they appear out of order from a timestamp perspective (think “async”). Obviously, if you’re sending stderr and stdout to separate files this quirk will not be apparent; again, it only surfaces when the streams are consolidated.

As a work-around, you could set your Console transport’s stderrLevels option to an empty array which tells it to not log anything to stderr, and only to stdout. However, the side-effect to the work-around is that you can no longer distinguish between error and non-error output at the stream level. Be cautious to where you employ this.

For example, when defining the console transport:

new winston.transports.Console({stderrLevels:[]});

IMO, this is not a bug.

[OndroNR]

@zamnuts’s answer should be mentioned in readme.