slog

Structured logging.

slog is a library for capturing structured log information. In contrast to "traditional" logging libraries, slog:

• captures a Context for each event
• captures arbitrary key-value metadata on each log event

slog forwards messages to log by default. But you probably want to write a a custom output to make use of the context and metadata. At Monzo, slog captures events both on a per-service and a per-request basis (using the context information) and sends them to a centralised logging system. This lets us view all the logs for a given request across all the micro-services it touches.

Usage

Internally at Monzo, we recommend that users always prefer structured logging where possible. An example of using slog for this would be:

slog.Info(ctx, "Loading widget", map[string]interface{}{
    "stage": "reticulating splines",
})

Errors

slog also provides a shorthand for capturing errors in the form of:

slog.Error(ctx, "Failed to load widget", err)

You may also add metadata to errors captured this way:

slog.Error(ctx, "Failed to load widget", err, map[string]interface{}{
    "user_id": 42,
})

Slog will pick up the first error it finds in the metadata and make it available in event.Error.

Other uses

For backwards-compatibility, slog accepts metadata in the form of map[string]string.

It also accepts format parameters in the style of Printf:

stage := "reticulating splines"
slog.Info(ctx, "Loading widget at stage: %s", stage)