Overview

Important This is designed to be used as a template. Take a look at the .inc and, especially, the “Using the Template” part!

Since macros like $$$LOGINFO, $$$LOGSTATUS and so on are only available in Ensemble enabled namespaces, having a fallback logging strategy can be useful, especially for development purposes.

This template was created for this use case specifically. You can use it while working with Cache without Ensemble, while messing around in ZAUTHENTICATE or while debugging things in namespaces where Ensemble is not available.

Using the Template

Using the template is quite simple:

Copy the code of the HBT.DemoLogging.inc into an include (.inc) file, for example MyApplication.Logging.inc
Change the routine name (HBT.DemoLogging) to the name you chose for the file minus the .inc, for example MyApplication.Logging
Find and replace on this file, replace HBT.DemoLog with the name your logging global is supposed to have, for example MyApplication.Log
Find and replace on this file, replace LogDemo with the name you want your macros to have, for example LogMyApplication
Save and Compile

Usage

Once you have compiled the Routine, assuming you named it MyApplication.Logging, you can include it like any other macro:
include (HBT.DemoLogging)
And then you have access to the following macros:

$$$LogMyApplicationError
$$$LogMyApplicationWarn
$$$LogMyApplicationInfo
$$$LogMyApplicationDebug
$$$LogMyApplicationTrace

Which you can call like this:

set tResult = <some-of-your-code-that-does-something>
$$$LogMyApplicationInfo("Result of my code is: "_tResult)

Enabling Logging

By default, not log output is written. You will have to enable it first, with a level you want to choose. Levels go from Off (0) to Trace (5), and a higher log level always includes all the lower ones.

To enable logging, open an IRIS session in the namespace you want to use it in, and execute this:

set ^MyApplication.Log = 5

where MyApplication.Log is the name of the global you chose. This will set the logging level to 5, which is trace (See the macro file for a list of logging levels and their numbers)

To disable logging, you can either kill the global (kill ^MyApplication.Log) or set the logging level to off (set ^MyApplication.Log = 0). The first will also remove the log history, the second will preserve it and just not log more.

Viewing the Logs

There are two ways to view the output:

You can open an IRIS session and do zwrite ^MyApplication.Log, printing the entire global to the console
You can use the mangement portal and go to http://localhost:52773//csp/sys/exp/UtilExpGlobalView.csp?$ID2=MyApplication.Log&$NAMESPACE= (host varies on where your server is running, of course)

Other

Please let me know if you have any improvements for this. Feel free to comment on the gist, fork or do whatever you want with this!

global-logging-template Works