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A package to dump anything to the log

Original โ€“ by Freek Van der Herten โ€“ 2 minute read

In this post, I'd like to show you a quick demo of our new package called laravel-log-dumper.

In Laravel, you can write stuff to the log using the facade or the info function.

Log::info('The meaning of life is 42.');

info("Don't panic.")

In some cases I find this easier to just dump things to the log than using the dump function.

But unfortunately, these functions don't take any input. Log::info will break when you give it an object, and info will break when passing an array to it.

// boom ๐Ÿ’ฃ
info([
    'Beware of the Leopard.',
    'Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.',
])

And you can't log multiple things at once.

// boom ๐Ÿ’ฃ
Log::info('In the beginning the universe was created.',  'This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.');

To fix this, I've created a small package called spatie/laravel-log-dumper. It contains a function ld (short for log dumper) that can dump anything to the log. Strings, arrays, objects, ... No problem!

// a string
ld('He hoped and prayed that there wasnโ€™t an afterlife.');

// an array
ld([
  'Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here',
  'and merely hoped that there wasnโ€™t an afterlife.',
]);

You can also pass it as many arguments as you'd like. They will all get written to the log.

ld('a string', ['a', 'b', 'c'], $object);

Behind the scenes, Symfony's Vardumper is used to transform anything into a string.

It's a tiny package, but it can come in handy.

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Webmentions

Gaurav Makhecha replied on 18th April 2020
5/ @freekmurze released a new package to dump anything to the log - string/array/object.. pass any number of and any type of params.๐Ÿช€๐Ÿ—ผ twitter.com/freekmurze/staโ€ฆ
Ashraf Kamarudin liked on 14th April 2020
Freek Van der Herten replied on 14th April 2020
Thereโ€™s a PR that will add it. So: soonโ„ข
Robin Dirksen liked on 14th April 2020
Zayn Buksh replied on 14th April 2020
Hi @freekmurze, is it possible to do have logging levels like debug/error/info/etc using LD?
Zayn Buksh replied on 14th April 2020
Brilliant ๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿฝ
Freek Van der Herten replied on 14th April 2020
So, I created ld so I donโ€™t have to think which kind of arguments it can take. Ld can take anything.
Freek Van der Herten replied on 14th April 2020
What happens if you use a string as the second argument?
smknstd replied on 14th April 2020
I think it won't work, it has to be an array. There is a really short section on it in the laravel doc
smknstd replied on 14th April 2020
ok
Eduard Lupacescu retweeted on 14th April 2020
smknstd replied on 14th April 2020
Isn't it really similar with PSR's context ? Laravel already lets you log it as a second argument php-fig.org/psr/psr-3/#13-โ€ฆ
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