I've never written any Symfony posts before, but since I've been using it in my job for some time now it's about time to change that. I really do like Symfony - it's quite refreshing to work with a grown-up framework and leaving the nodejs/javascript scene, where most things are still pretty young and partially even immature, apart for some time.

One of my most recent tasks was to implement a logging system for specific events, mostly related to entities (e.g. events like adding a product, etc.). Since it should be easy to search specific log entries everything is going to land within a database.

We're going through three different stages in this post:

Logging to database in Symfony using Monolog by writing our own handler Add extra information by using a processor How to handle event and implement event subscribers

These sections will be handled separately and are mostly independent from each other - hence feel free to jump to whatever you need without having to worry about to miss something important.

1. Logging to database in Symfony using Monolog by writing our own handler

Interestingly I didn't find a clean and fast solution for database logging for Symfony. There's a monolog-mysql handler on GitHub - sadly it's triggering some errors (not just in Silex, also in Symfony). Luckily Symfony and Monolog make implementing it ourselves quite easy.

The entity

The first thing we need is an entity for the log entries.

// src/AppBundle/Entity/Log.php namespace AppBundle\Entity; use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM; /** * @ORM\Entity(repositoryClass="AppBundle\Repository\LogRepository") * @ORM\Table(name="log") * @ORM\HasLifecycleCallbacks */ class Log { /** * @ORM\Id * @ORM\Column(type="integer") * @ORM\GeneratedValue(strategy="AUTO") */ private $id; /** * @ORM\Column(name="message", type="text") */ private $message; /** * @ORM\Column(name="context", type="array") */ private $context; /** * @ORM\Column(name="level", type="smallint") */ private $level; /** * @ORM\Column(name="level_name", type="string", length=50) */ private $levelName; /** * @ORM\Column(name="extra", type="array") */ private $extra; /** * @ORM\Column(name="created_at", type="datetime") */ private $createdAt; /** * @ORM\PrePersist */ public function onPrePersist() { $this->createdAt = new \DateTime(); } }

Important: To keep this piece of code a bit shorter the getters and setters are missing here. Therefore don't forget to run php bin/console doctrine:generate:entities AppBundle/Entity/Log to generate them.

This scheme is basically the one used by Monolog, except channel , but since we're using an own channel for database logging it would be same everytime.

To have our createdAt created automatically we're using the HasLifecycleCallbacks annotation in conjunction with the PrePersist annotation to set the date before saving entities.

The Monolog handler

The next thing we need is a new handler for Monolog.

// src/AppBundle/Util/MonologDBHandler.php namespace AppBundle\Util; use AppBundle\Entity\Log; use Doctrine\ORM\EntityManagerInterface; use Monolog\Handler\AbstractProcessingHandler; class MonologDBHandler extends AbstractProcessingHandler { /** * @var EntityManagerInterface */ protected $em; /** * MonologDBHandler constructor. * @param EntityManagerInterface $em */ public function __construct(EntityManagerInterface $em) { parent::__construct(); $this->em = $em; } /** * Called when writing to our database * @param array $record */ protected function write(array $record) { $logEntry = new Log(); $logEntry->setMessage($record['message']); $logEntry->setLevel($record['level']); $logEntry->setLevelName($record['level_name']); $logEntry->setExtra($record['extra']); $logEntry->setContext($record['context']); $this->em->persist($logEntry); $this->em->flush(); } }

Pretty simple class; the write method will called everytime we're going to utilize this handler, the constructor is to get the entity manager object, which will be injected in the next step.

Configuring Monolog and Symfony

First let's configure Monolog by opening the app/config/config.yml and add the following lines:

monolog: channels: ['db'] handlers: db: channels: ['db'] type: service id: monolog.db_handler

We now have a custom channel for db logging which is handled by the class defined above. We just need to tell Symfony about the service; open the app/config/services.yml and add these lines:

services: # ... monolog.db_handler: class: AppBundle\Util\MonologDBHandler arguments: ['@doctrine.orm.entity_manager']

Now Symfony knows about the handler and injects our entity manager object.

That's it.

We're done. Wohoo!

That's basically everything you need for database logging. Validation, etc. is up to you. To utilize our database logger now just use it as follows:

$this->container->get('monolog.logger.db')->info('something happened', [ 'foo' => 'bar' ]);

It's used the exact way as default logging with Monolog.

2. Add extra information by using a processor

The application I was writing required detailed log entries. It's not just enough to know what happened, I also required to know how it happened. Therefor I wanted to save some client and request information for every entry. Thanks to Processors this is a very simple task:

// src/AppBundle/Util/RequestProcessor.php namespace AppBundle\Util; use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\ContainerInterface; use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\RequestStack; /** * Class RequestProcessor * @package AppBundle\Util */ class RequestProcessor { /** * @var RequestStack */ protected $request; /** * RequestProcessor constructor. * @param RequestStack $request * @param ContainerInterface $container */ public function __construct(RequestStack $request) { $this->request = $request; } /** * @param array $record * @return array */ public function processRecord(array $record) { $req = $this->request->getCurrentRequest(); $record['extra']['client_ip'] = $req->getClientIp(); $record['extra']['client_port'] = $req->getPort(); $record['extra']['uri'] = $req->getUri(); $record['extra']['query_string'] = $req->getQueryString(); $record['extra']['method'] = $req->getMethod(); $record['extra']['request'] = $req->request->all(); return $record; } }

And add it to your app/config/services.yml :

services: monolog.processor.request: class: AppBundle\Util\RequestProcessor arguments: ['@request_stack', '@service_container'] tags: - { name: monolog.processor, method: processRecord, handler: db }

Now every time we log through our db channel this processor will add additional information to every single log entry. It's up to you to add whatever data you want (tokens, user information, ...).

The last thing I needed to think of was where to log things. My initial attempt (keep in mind that the application I used all these techniques was/is my second Symfony project) was to put all logging into the controllers, but that just didn't felt right.

To keep everything DRY and organize it better I utilized the event system and implemented a fairly easy logic: everytime something happens which should be logged an event is fired (e.g. product_added ). Event subscribers are listening for these events and handle the logging.

The Symfony docs suggests events for every operation (like the OrderPlacedEvent there'd probably be a OrderDeletedEvent and OrderUpdatedEvent ) - since most of my events are simply logging entities to the database I needed to break that down a bit and generalize it more. I ended up using more general events, in terms of orders it would be something like OrderEvents . These events look like this:

// src/AppBundle/Events/OrderEvent.php <?php namespace AppBundle\Events; /** * Class OrderEvent * @package AppBundle\Events */ class OrderEvent extends AbstractEvent { const ORDER_ADDED = 'order_added'; const ORDER_UPDATED = 'order_updated'; const ORDER_DELETED = 'order_deleted'; }

Very simple class which provides names for all the actions an order event can have. A bit more interesting is the parent class AbstractEvent :

// src/AppBundle/Events/AbstractEvent.php namespace AppBundle\Events; use Symfony\Component\EventDispatcher\Event; /** * Class AbstractEvent * @package AppBundle\Events */ abstract class AbstractEvent extends Event { /** * @var null */ protected $entity; /** * AbstractEvent constructor. * @param null $entity */ public function __construct($entity = null) { $this->entity = $entity; } /** * @return bool|null */ public function getEntity() { if($this->entity != null) { return $this->entity; } return false; } }

Every time we create a new event instance we can pass an entity and get this entity from outside. This is basically the OrderPlacedEvent class from the Symfony docs in a way more generic way.

Note: It would be good to have some kind of type validation here, since it'd make sense to have an OrderEvent just accepting an Order entity. Sadly, I'm not sure yet about how to implement that.

The next thing we need is an event subscriber which listens for specific events. Let's assume our listener is listening for some OrderEvent :

// src/AppBundle/EventSubscriber/OrderSubscriber.php namespace AppBundle\EventSubscriber; use AppBundle\Events\OrderEvent; use Symfony\Component\EventDispatcher\EventSubscriberInterface; /** * Class OrderSubscriber * @package AppBundle\EventSubscriber */ class OrderSubscriber extends AbstractSubscriber implements EventSubscriberInterface { /** * @return array */ public static function getSubscribedEvents() { return [ OrderEvent::ORDER_ADDED => 'onOrderAdded', OrderEvent::ORDER_UPDATED => 'onOrderUpdated', OrderEvent::ORDER_DELETED => 'onOrderDeleted' ]; } /** * @param OrderEvent $event */ public function onOrderAdded(OrderEvent $event) { $this->logEntity(OrderEvent::ORDER_ADDED, [ 'product' => $event->getEntity()->getProduct() ]); } /** * @param OrderEvent $event */ public function onOrderUpdated(OrderEvent $event) { $this->logEntity(OrderEvent::ORDER_UPDATED, [ 'product' => $event->getEntity()->getProduct() ]); } /** * @param OrderEvent $event */ public function onOrderDeleted(OrderEvent $event) { $this->logEntity(OrderEvent::ORDER_DELETED, [ 'product' => $event->getEntity()->getProduct() ]); } }

Our subscriber now handles logging to the database. Again I used a parent class for some general logic, the AbstractSubscriber :

// src/AppBundle/EventSubscriber/AbstractSubscriber.php namespace AppBundle\EventSubscriber; use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\ContainerInterface; /* * Class AbstractSubscriber * @package AppBundle\EventSubscriber */ abstract class AbstractSubscriber { /** * Default action for logs */ const UNKNOWN_ACTION = 'unknown_action'; /** * @var ContainerInterface */ protected $container; /** * AbstractSubscriber constructor. * @param ContainerInterface $container */ public function __construct(ContainerInterface $container) { $this->container = $container; } /** * @param string $action * @param array $entityFields */ protected function logEntity($action = self::UNKNOWN_ACTION, array $entityFields) { $this->container->get('monolog.logger.db')->info($action, [ 'entity' => $entityFields ]); } }

Since logging entities is the main purpose of this system it makes sense to have a logEntity method which is responsible for writing entity data to the context of our log entry.

The last thing we need to do is to register our subscribers. Add the following lines to the app/config/services.yml :

services: # ... appbundle.subscriber.abstract_subscriber: class: AppBundle\EventSubscriber\AbstractSubscriber arguments: ['@service_container'] appbundle.subscriber.order_subscriber: class: AppBundle\EventSubscriber\OrderSubscriber parent: appbundle.subscriber.abstract_subscriber tags: - { name: kernel.event_subscriber }

We need to register every subscriber here - don't forget about the parent key to inject dependencies to the AbstractSubscriber class.

Example

Dispatching an event is simple as is:

$this->get('event_dispatcher')->dispatch( OrderEvent::ORDER_ADDED, new OrderEvent($order) );

Final words

As said within the post: the project I implemented this system is my second Symfony project. I'm sure there's room for improvement, but I'm pretty happy with it so far. Feel free to suggest any improvement or changes in the comments.