Biting Into A PEAR - PHP

As if all that wasn't enough, PHP offers one more alternative - a special Log class that comes courtesy of PEAR, the PHP Extension and Application Repository (http://pear.php.net). In case you didn't know, PEAR is an online repository of free PHP software, including classes and modules for everything from data archiving to XML parsing. This Log class is maintained by Jon Parise, and the latest version can be downloaded from http://pear.php.net/package-info.php?package=Log

Like the error_log() function, the PEAR Log class allows logging to a variety of different destinations - system logger, text file, email address, database and even MCAL. Here's an example demonstrating basic usage:

<?php
// include class
include("Log.php");
// create Log object
$l = &Log::singleton("file", "my.log");
// test it
$v = "Mary had a little lamb";
if (!is_numeric($v)) { $l->log("Non-numeric variable encountered",
PEAR_LOG_WARNING); }
$a = array("chocolate", "strawberry", "peach");
if (!in_array('fish', $a)) { $l->log("No fish available", PEAR_LOG_ERR);
}
$conn = @mysql_connect("localhost", "joe", "pass");
if (!$conn) { $l->log("Could not connect to database", PEAR_LOG_CRIT);
}
?>

The first step here is to include() the Log class:

// include class
include("Log.php");

Once that's done, a new Log object can be created. This object constructor requires, as its first parameter, a string indicating the kind of log to open - current valid values are 'console', 'syslog', 'sql', 'file', and 'mcal'. Depending on the log type, additional data may be provided - the name of the file to use in case of a file logger, for example.

// create Log object
$l = &Log::singleton("file", "my.log");

The Log class internally defines eight priority levels for logging - here's the list, culled directly from the source code of the class:

$priorities = array(
PEAR_LOG_EMERG   => 'emergency',
PEAR_LOG_ALERT   => 'alert',
PEAR_LOG_CRIT    => 'critical',
PEAR_LOG_ERR     => 'error',
PEAR_LOG_WARNING => 'warning',
PEAR_LOG_NOTICE  => 'notice',
PEAR_LOG_INFO    => 'info',
PEAR_LOG_DEBUG   => 'debug'
);

Each log message that you send to the logger can be flagged with a specific priority, and the logger can be set up to log only those messages matching or exceeding a specific priority level (by default, all messages are logged). This can be clearly seen from the test code below, in which each message to the logger includes a priority level:

$v = "Mary had a little lamb";
if (!is_numeric($v)) { $l->log("Non-numeric variable encountered",
PEAR_LOG_WARNING); }
$a = array("chocolate", "strawberry", "peach");
if (!in_array('fish', $a)) { $l->log("No fish available", PEAR_LOG_ERR);
}
$conn = @mysql_connect("localhost", "joe", "pass");
if (!$conn) { $l->log("Could not connect to database", PEAR_LOG_CRIT);
}

Here's what the log file looks like:

Nov 26 06:47:15  [warning] Non-numeric variable encountered
Nov 26 06:47:15  [error] No fish available
Nov 26 06:47:17  [critical] Could not connect to database

If you'd like to tell the logger to only log messages above a certain priority level - for example, critical and above - this priority level should be specified as the fifth argument to the object constructor. Consider the following revision of the previous example:

<?php
// include class
include("Log.php");
// create Log object
$l = &Log::singleton("file", "my.log", NULL, array(), PEAR_LOG_ERR);
// test it
$v = "Mary had a little lamb";
if (!is_numeric($v)) { $l->log("Non-numeric variable encountered",
PEAR_LOG_WARNING); }
$a = array("chocolate", "strawberry", "peach");
if (!in_array('fish', $a)) { $l->log("No fish available", PEAR_LOG_ERR);
}
$conn = @mysql_connect("localhost", "joe", "pass");
if (!$conn) { $l->log("Could not connect to database", PEAR_LOG_CRIT);
}
?>

In this case, only messages flagged as PEAR_LOG_ERR and above will be written to the specified log file.

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