Configure Logging

Setting up Logging

Do not use logging to send personal data such as names or email addresses to AppSignal. If you want to identify a person, consider using a user ID, hash, or pseudonymized identifier instead.

This documentation will take you through all the necessary steps and additional information needed when adding a new log source to your application.

Creating a Log Source

Are you setting up logging for Vercel? There are some additional steps required when creating a Vercel log source. Read our Vercel Configuration documentation for step-to-step setup instructions.

To send logs to AppSignal, you'll first need to configure your log sources. Your application could have many log sources, like a database or app process. You will need to do this once per log source. For example, if you want to send MongoDB and Nginx logs to AppSignal, you'd need to create a source for each of these integrations.

To do this, navigate to the Logging page in the AppSignal application and click on the Add log source button in the top right of the page. A pop-up will appear, prompting you to name your source. It's important to give your source a descriptive name like Redis or MongoDB so that you can successfully query these logs in the future.

Choose Your Platform

We support sending logs to AppSignal from various sources and platforms and are hard at work to add support for more. You can find out more about the platforms supported in this documentation's Platform Configuration section.

✨ You can also send logs directly from supported AppSignal integrations. In this instance, you don't need to create a source and should follow separate installation instructions for your integration. More information can be found in the Logging From AppSignal Integrations documentation.

Choose The Log Format

Your log data must not contain any personal data, such as names, email addresses, etc. It is your responsibility to ensure this data is filtered out before being sent to AppSignal, and when identifying a person is necessary that your application uses alternative forms of identification such as a user ID, hash, or pseudonym.

Next, you need to specify how your application's logs will be formatted. AppSignal supports four types of log formatting:

Read more about how to format your logs in the Formatting Documentation.

Create Source

Once you've chosen the name and format of your new source is created, it will be listed in the Log Sources table on the Logs page, alongside a generated API key.

Screenshot of Log Sources table highlighting API key

You will now need to configure your application to send logs to AppSignal using one of the platforms we support.

Platform Configuration

Once you've created a new source, you'll need to configure your application to send logs to AppSignal. This should be via the same platform you defined when creating your log source.

Supported Logging Platforms

Completing Setup

As AppSignal only stores logs that are sent to it from your application, you will only be able to see logs created after you've completed your configuration.

Once you've configured your chosen platform, you'll be able to view and query your logs from the All logs page in the AppSignal application. There's more information on how to manage, view, and query your logs in this guide's next step.

If you've followed the above steps and cannot to see any logs in AppSignal, you may want to read our Troubleshooting Guide or reach out to us for assistance.