While developing an application or library, it is very useful to log the progress, as well as the state and path of program execution. Using a suitable text logger, a developer can record the execution paths and state of an application. In some cases – such as with streaming media, it is the only practical way of tracking / narrowing down a complex bug. Logging to a file is the most common practice, which is simple, though not real time. Also, it’s difficult to locate a problem in a whole pile of text without any other characteristics, such as highlighting color or font as visual clues.

Logastic provides four standard log targets – Window, File, Debugger and Console. Each target has some advantages over other; for example, window logging can be used to log and view data in real time and can be scrolled to any area of the window. Using different colors, font, indentation etc., specific text can be differentiated from the rest. Searching also helps a user to find a required incident / event that may have an associated text. It helps to be able to select a set of lines from the window, and copy to another location. Using debugger log, user can log the strings to the debugger output window, and make it blend with any other debug log messages coming from other components of the Operating Systems, libraries or the application itself.

By supporting both synchronous (immediately logging to the target) and asynchronous (accumulating the text to be logged at an appropriate time) mode of logging, Logastic allows the developer to choose what is best for an application. Asynchronous logging is best suited for cases where blocking / slowing of dataflow is not acceptable, while synchronous logging is required where it’s important to know that a specific task has been completed (or not) based on whether the log indicates so.

One of the great features of Logastic is the simplicity it presents to the developer. The developer can just instantiate a Logastic COM object, specify the logging targets, and start logging! Logastic has built-in highlighting font / color used in the logging, as well as options to choose indentation and verbosity levels. Apart from the built-in highlighting elements, you can also set your choices for preferred font, color etc. through an XML-based configuration file, which can be loaded to set all those options in one go!

It is also easy to create custom logging targets, e.g., memory or database, based on the base classes provided along with the Logastic SDK as part of the product. These custom targets extend the logging capability as per your application needs with minimal effort.