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+---
+title: Structured Logging with slog
+date: 2023-08-22
+by:
+- Jonathan Amsterdam
+summary: The Go 1.21 standard library includes a new structured logging package, log/slog.
+---
+
+The new `log/slog` package in Go 1.21 brings structured logging to the standard
+library. Structured logs use key-value pairs so they can be parsed, filtered,
+searched, and analyzed quickly and reliably.
+For servers, logging is an important way for developers to
+observe the detailed behavior of the system, and often the first place they go
+to debug it. Logs therefore tend to be voluminous, and the ability to search and
+filter them quickly is essential.
+
+The standard library has had a logging package, `log`,
+since Go's initial release over a decade ago.
+Over time,
+we've learned that structured logging is important to Go programmers. It has
+consistently ranked high in our annual survey, and many packages in the Go
+ecosystem provide it. Some of these are quite popular: one of the first structured
+logging packages for Go, [logrus](https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/sirupsen/logrus),
+is used in over 100,000 other packages.
+
+With many structured logging packages to choose from, large programs
+will often end up including more than one through their dependencies. The main program
+might have to configure each of these logging packages so that the log output is
+consistent: it all goes to the same place, in the same format. By including
+structured logging in the standard library, we can provide a common framework
+that all the other structured logging packages can share.
+
+## A tour of `slog`
+
+Here is the simplest program that uses `slog`:
+
+```
+package main
+
+import "log/slog"
+
+func main() {
+	slog.Info("hello, world")
+}
+```
+
+As of this writing, it prints:
+
+    2023/08/04 16:09:19 INFO hello, world
+
+The `Info` function prints a message at the Info log level using the
+default logger, which in this case is the default logger from the `log`
+package---the same logger you get when you write `log.Printf`.
+That explains why the output looks so similar: only the "INFO" is new.
+Out of the box, `slog` and the original `log` package work together to make it
+easy to get started.
+
+Besides `Info`, there are functions for three other levels---`Debug`, `Warn`, and
+`Error`---as well as a more general `Log` function that takes the level as an
+argument. In `slog`, levels are just integers, so you aren't limited to the four
+named levels. For example, `Info` is zero and `Warn` is 4, so if your logging system
+has a level in between those, you can use 2 for it.
+
+Unlike with the `log` package, we can easily add key-value pairs to our output
+by writing them after the message:
+
+```
+slog.Info("hello, world", "user", os.Getenv("USER"))
+```
+
+The output now looks like this:
+
+    2023/08/04 16:27:19 INFO hello, world user=jba
+
+As we mentioned, `slog`'s top-level functions use the default logger.
+We can get this logger explicitly, and call its methods:
+
+```
+logger := slog.Default()
+logger.Info("hello, world", "user", os.Getenv("USER"))
+```
+
+Every top-level function corresponds to a method on a `slog.Logger`.
+The output is the same as before.
+
+Initially, slog's output goes through the default `log.Logger`, producing the
+output we've seen above.
+We can change the output by changing the _handler_ used by the logger.
+`slog` comes with two built-in handlers.
+A `TextHandler` emits all log information in the form `key=value`.
+This program creates a new logger using a `TextHandler` and
+makes the same call to the `Info` method:
+
+```
+logger := slog.New(slog.NewTextHandler(os.Stdout, nil))
+logger.Info("hello, world", "user", os.Getenv("USER"))
+```
+
+Now the output looks like this:
+
+    time=2023-08-04T16:56:03.786-04:00 level=INFO msg="hello, world" user=jba
+
+Everything has been turned into a key-value pair, with strings quoted as needed to preserve structure.
+
+For JSON output, install the built-in `JSONHandler` instead:
+
+```
+logger := slog.New(slog.NewJSONHandler(os.Stdout, nil))
+logger.Info("hello, world", "user", os.Getenv("USER"))
+```
+
+Now our output is a sequence of JSON objects, one per logging call:
+
+    {"time":"2023-08-04T16:58:02.939245411-04:00","level":"INFO","msg":"hello, world","user":"jba"}
+
+You are not limited to the built-in handlers. Anyone can write a handler by
+implementing the `slog.Handler` interface. A handler can generate output in a
+particular format, or it can wrap another handler to add functionality.
+One of the
+[examples](https://pkg.go.dev/log/slog@master#example-Handler-LevelHandler) in
+the `slog` documentation shows how to write a wrapping handler that changes the minimum
+level at which log messages will be displayed.
+
+The alternating key-value syntax for attributes that we've been using so far is convenient, but for frequently executed log statements it may be more efficient to use the `Attr` type and call the `LogAttrs` method.
+These work together to minimize memory allocations.
+There are functions for building `Attr`s out of strings, numbers, and other common
+types. This call to `LogAttrs` produces the same output as above, but does it faster:
+
+```
+slog.LogAttrs(context.Background(), slog.LevelInfo, "hello, world",
+    slog.String("user", os.Getenv("USER")))
+```
+
+There is a lot more to `slog`:
+
+- As the call to `LogAttrs` shows, you can pass a `context.Context` to some log functions
+  so a handler can extract context information like trace IDs. (Canceling the context does not prevent the log entry from being written.)
+
+- You can call `Logger.With` to add attributes to a logger that will appear in
+  all of its output, effectively factoring out the common parts of several log
+  statements. This is not only convenient, but it can also help performance, as discussed below.
+
+- Attributes can be combined into groups. This can add more structure to your
+  log output and can help to disambiguate keys that would otherwise be identical.
+
+- You can control how a value appears in the logs by providing its type with a `LogValue`
+  method. That can be used to [log the fields of a struct as a
+  group](https://pkg.go.dev/log/slog@master#example-LogValuer-Group) or [redact
+  sensitive data](https://pkg.go.dev/log/slog@master#example-LogValuer-Secret),
+  among other things.
+
+The best place to learn about all of `slog` is the [package
+documentation](https://pkg.dev.go/log/slog).
+
+
+## Performance
+
+We wanted `slog` to be fast.
+For large-scale performance gains, we designed [the `Handler`
+interface](https://pkg.go.dev/log/slog#Handler) to provide optimization
+opportunities. The `Enabled` method is called at the beginning of every log
+event, giving the handler a chance to drop unwanted log events quickly. The
+`WithAttrs` and `WithGroup` methods let the handler format
+attributes added by `Logger.With` once, rather than at each logging call. This
+pre-formatting can provide a significant speedup when large attributes, like an
+`http.Request`, are added to a `Logger` and then used in many logging calls.
+
+To inform our performance optimization work, we investigated typical patterns of logging in existing open-source projects. We found that over 95%
+of calls to logging methods pass five or fewer attributes. We also categorized
+the types of attributes, finding that a handful of common types accounted for
+the majority.
+We then wrote benchmarks that captured the common cases, and used them as a
+guide to see where the time went.
+The greatest gains came from paying careful attention to memory allocation.
+
+## The design process
+
+The `slog` package is one of the largest additions to the standard library since
+Go 1 was released in 2012. We wanted to take our time designing it, and we knew
+that community feedback would be essential.
+
+By April 2022, we had gathered enough data to demonstrate the importance of
+structured logging to the Go community. The Go team decided to explore adding it
+to the standard library.
+
+We began by looking at how the existing structured logging packages were
+designed. We also took advantage of the large collection of open-source Go code
+stored on the Go module proxy to learn how these packages were actually used.
+Our first design was informed by this research as well as Go's spirit of
+simplicity.
+We wanted an API that is light on the page and easy to understand, without
+sacrificing performance.
+
+It was never a goal to replace existing third-party logging packages.
+They are all good at what they do, and replacing existing code that works well
+is rarely a good use of a developer's time.
+We divided the API into a frontend, `Logger`, that calls a backend interface, `Handler`.
+That way, existing logging packages can talk to a common backend,
+so the packages that use them can interoperate without having to be rewritten.
+Handlers are written or in progress for many common logging
+packages, including
+[Zap](https://github.com/uber-go/zap/tree/master/exp/zapslog),
+[logr](https://github.com/go-logr/logr/pull/196)
+and [hclog](https://github.com/evanphx/go-hclog-slog).
+
+We shared our initial design within the Go team and other developers who had
+extensive logging experience. We made alterations based on their feedback, and
+by August of 2022 we felt we had a workable design. On August 29,
+we made our [experimental
+implementation](https://github.com/golang/exp/tree/master/slog) public
+and began a [GitHub discussion](https://github.com/golang/go/discussions/54763) to hear
+what the community had to say.
+The response was enthusiastic and largely positive.
+Thanks to insightful comments from the designers and users of other structured
+logging packages, we made several changes and added a few features, like groups
+and the `LogValuer` interface. We changed the mapping from log levels to
+integers twice.
+
+After two months and about 300 comments, we felt we were ready for an actual
+[proposal](https://go.dev/issue/56345) and accompanying [design
+doc](https://go.googlesource.com/proposal/+/03441cb358c7b27a8443bca839e5d7a314677ea6/design/56345-structured-logging.md).
+The proposal issue garnered over 800 comments and resulted in many improvements to
+the API and the implementation. Here are two examples of API changes, both
+concerning `context.Context`:
+
+1. Originally the API supported adding loggers to a
+context. Many felt that this was a convenient way to plumb a logger easily
+through levels of code that didn't care about it. But others felt it was
+smuggling in  an implicit dependency, making the code harder to understand.
+Ultimately, we removed the feature as being too controversial.
+
+2. We also wrestled
+with the related question of passing a context to logging methods, trying a
+number of designs. We initially resisted the standard pattern of passing the
+context as the first argument because we didn't want every logging call to
+require a context, but ultimately created two sets of logging methods, one
+with a context and one without.
+
+One change we did not make concerned the alternating key-and-value syntax for
+expressing attributes:
+
+    slog.Info("message", "k1", v1, "k2", v2)
+
+Many felt strongly that this was a bad idea. They found it hard to read
+and easy to get wrong by omitting a key or value. They preferred explicit
+attributes for expressing structure:
+
+    slog.Info("message", slog.Int("k1", v1), slog.String("k2", v2))
+
+But we felt that the lighter syntax was important to keeping Go easy and fun to
+use, especially for new Go programmers. We also knew that several Go logging
+packages, like `logr`, `go-kit/log` and `zap` (with its `SugaredLogger`)
+successfully used alternating keys and
+values. We added a [vet
+check](https://pkg.go.dev/golang.org/x/tools/go/analysis/passes/slog)
+to catch common mistakes, but did not change the design.
+
+On March 15, 2023, the proposal was accepted, but there were still some minor
+unresolved issues. Over the next few weeks, ten additional changes were proposed
+and resolved. By early July, the `log/slog` package implementation was complete,
+along with the `testing/slogtest` package for verifying
+handlers and the vet check for correct usage of alternating keys and values.
+
+And on August 8, Go 1.21 was released, and `slog` with it.
+We hope you find it useful, and as fun to use as it was to build.
+
+And a big thanks to everyone who participated in the discussion and the proposal
+process. Your contributions improved `slog` immensely.
+
+
+## Resources
+
+The [documentation](https://pkg.go.dev/log/slog) for the `log/slog` package
+explains how to use it and provides several examples.
+
+The [wiki page](https://github.com/golang/go/wiki/Resources-for-slog) has
+additional resources provided by the Go community, including a variety of
+handlers.
+
+If you want to write a handler, consult the
+[handler writing
+guide](https://github.com/golang/example/blob/master/slog-handler-guide/README.md).