NAME

Log::Dispatch::File - Object for logging to files

SYNOPSIS 

  use Log::Dispatch::File;

  my $file = Log::Dispatch::File->new( name      => 'file1',
                                       min_level => 'info',
                                       filename  => 'Somefile.log',
                                       mode      => 'append' );

  $file->log( level => 'emerg', message => "I've fallen and I can't get up\n" );

DESCRIPTION

This module provides a simple object for logging to files under the Log::Dispatch::* system.

METHODS

* new(%p)

This method takes a hash of parameters. The following options are valid:

* name ($)
The name of the object (not the filename!). Required.
* min_level ($)
The minimum logging level this object will accept. See the Log::Dispatch documentation on Log Levels for more information. Required.
* max_level ($)
The maximum logging level this obejct will accept. See the Log::Dispatch documentation on Log Levels for more information. This is not required. By default the maximum is the highest possible level (which means functionally that the object has no maximum).
* filename ($)
The filename to be opened for writing.
* mode ($)
The mode the file should be opened with. Valid options are 'write', '>', 'append', '>>', or the relevant constants from Fcntl. The default is 'write'.
* close_after_write ($)

Whether or not the file should be closed after each write. This defaults to false.

If this is true, then the mode will aways be append, so that the file is not re-written for each new message.

* autoflush ($)
Whether or not the file should be autoflushed. This defaults to true.
* permissions ($)

If the file does not already exist, the permissions that it should be created with. Optional. The argument passed must be a valid octal value, such as 0600 or the constants available from Fcntl, like S_IRUSR|S_IWUSR.

See perlfunc/chmod for more on potential traps when passing octal values around. Most importantly, remember that if you pass a string that looks like an octal value, like this: 

 my $mode = '0644';

Then the resulting file will end up with permissions like this: 

 --w----r-T

which is probably not what you want.

* callbacks( \& or [ \&, \&, ... ] )

This parameter may be a single subroutine reference or an array reference of subroutine references. These callbacks will be called in the order they are given and passed a hash containing the following keys: 

 ( message => $log_message, level => $log_level )

The callbacks are expected to modify the message and then return a single scalar containing that modified message. These callbacks will be called when either the log or log_to methods are called and will only be applied to a given message once.

* log_message( message => $ )
Sends a message to the appropriate output. Generally this shouldn't be called directly but should be called through the log() method (in Log::Dispatch::Output).

AUTHOR

Dave Rolsky, <autarch@urth.org>