Question 1

How to make Pino logs pretty for development?

Accepted Answer

Use the pino-pretty module to format JSON logs into human-readable output. Install it separately and pipe logs through it, or configure Pino to use it as a transport, but note it's an extra dependency not included by default.

Question 2

Pino vs Winston: which is better for Node.js?

Accepted Answer

Pino excels in performance and structured logging, often being faster, while Winston offers more built-in transports and flexibility out-of-the-box. Choose Pino for speed-critical production apps, and Winston if you need immediate, diverse logging destinations without extra setup.

Question 3

How to send Pino logs to Elasticsearch?

Accepted Answer

Use a transport like pino-elasticsearch or run a separate process to ingest JSON logs. Pino recommends offloading such processing to worker threads to avoid blocking, so you'll need to set up a transport configuration and potentially manage thread safety.

Question 4

Can Pino be used in the browser?

Accepted Answer

Yes, Pino has a browser API documented separately, but its primary focus is Node.js and server-side runtimes. For browser logging, consider its lightweight approach, but be aware that performance benefits may vary compared to native browser logging solutions.

Question 5

What's the recommended way to handle Pino logs in production?

Accepted Answer

Run transports in separate worker threads using pino.transport to process logs asynchronously, such as for alerting or reformatting. This prevents blocking the event loop but requires managing additional processes or services for log aggregation.

Question 6

How to add custom context to Pino logs?

Accepted Answer

Use child loggers to inherit and extend context, like logger.child({ userId: 123 }). This allows structured logging with added properties, making it easy to trace requests or sessions without cluttering the base logger.

pino

What is pino?

Overview

Use Cases

Best For

Related Projects

Found a gem we're missing?

Not Ideal For

Pros & Cons

Pros

Cons

Frequently Asked Questions