logq

A small server/webpage/cli for visualising logs

Usage

Say you have an application that emits JSON logs. You can use logq similarly to jq:

npm install --global logq

my-server | logq

This will start a webserver which you can view at http://localhost:7001, which renders a simple UI that allows searching your logs using LokiJS find queries.

You can duplicate and remove queries to have multiple log filters appear side-by-side. The queries are parsed as JSON5 (basically, JSON without double-quote requirements and allowing trailing commas).

Under the hood, a websocket server is started as well, meaning the frontend loses it's connection if you kill the server. You can just refresh when you start the server again.

Other installation methods

You could also use npx to avoid installing globally:

my-server | npx logq

Or install it as a dev dependency:

npm install --save-dev logq

Then add a script to package.json:

  "scripts": {
    "dev": "my-server | logq"
  }

Or run from a shell:

my-server | ./node_modules/.bin/logq

You can add --tee to tell it to print the log messages it receives to stdout, so you can pipe them to another tool too.

Status

I wrote this for myself, it may or may not work for you. There's not much of an API, but what there is may change without warning (e.g. --tee - that might be a bastardisation of a linux binary that I don't remember all that well, so could get renamed).

Why is it called logq?

Because the npm package name was available, and it's only four letters so it's easy to type fast. Also I guess because you use it a bit like jq?