Learning ColdBox: III

Before we get into writing the application, I want to ask about logging with LogBox. A while ago, I felt the need for something more than I could get with native logging. During development, I wanted to have the ability to log something. That something might be a simple value, an array, a struct, an object, etc.

While I didn't want logging to occur when code moved to production (for obvious reasons), I did want to leave the code in place (so that, for example, I could turn it on if some anomaly occurred or if I wished to time certain processes while running in production). And finally, I didn't want to wrap logging code in if statements. That's ugly and, with enough of them, could become expensive. What to do?

The solution I decided on was to have two logging classes: TrueLogger and FalseLogger. When the application began, the question was asked: are we in production or development? If in development, I would instantiate a TrueLogger -- something like this:

component{
   public void function log( value ) {
      // determine data type of value and log appropriately...
      
      // real code for logging goes here...
   }
}

In production, though, a FalseLogger was instantiated:

component{
   public void function log( value ) {
      // do nothing
      return;
   }
}

Now, I could have code like this:

logger.log( myObject );

Or this:

public function doPossiblyTimeConsumingProcess() {
   var start = GetTickCount();
   // possibly time-consuming code here
   var stop = GetTickCount();
   logger.log( stop - start & ' ms to run doPossiblyTimeConsumingProcess()';
}

To turn logging on during production, I could pass a URL variable (in the same way ColdBox accepts a fwreinit variable).

Prior to coming up with the two logger types, I wouldn't have left this solution in production. Logging an object required getting its properties, then looping over them and inserting their names and values into a log file -- much too expensive. But with FalseLogger, the cost was virtually nil.

Now that I'm learning ColdBox, I see this wonderful LogBox. I thought the log appenders were really nice -- they allow you to "log" to a normal log file, an SMS text message, twitter -- you name it.

My question for ColdBoxers out there: does LogBox have a solution to what I wanted to accomplish: leave logging code in place without the downsides of actual logging when it isn't required?