Structured Logging with slog: A Powerful Tool for Go Developers
The article introduces the new log/slog package in Go 1.21, which brings structured logging to the standard library. Structured logs use key-value pairs, allowing for quick and reliable parsing, filtering, searching, and analysis. Logging is crucial for developers to observe system behavior and debug, but it can become voluminous. Structured logging has consistently ranked high in the annual Go survey, and popular packages like logrus have been widely adopted. However, including multiple logging packages in large programs can lead to configuration inconsistencies. By incorporating structured logging into the standard library, Go provides a common framework for all structured logging packages to share. The article includes a tour of slog, showcasing its simplicity and compatibility with the original log package. slog offers functions for different log levels and allows for the addition of key-value pairs to log output, making it a powerful tool for Go developers.