Symfony: Add log message manually

Contributed by qmchenry  
Tagged: Symfony  

When troubleshooting a complex web application (or a simple one), there are times that sending a message to a log file will help. Two command syntaxes are required depending on if you are in an action or a template. When using the development environment of an application in Symfony, the log message will show up in the development toolbar which will make your life even easier.

To send a log message from within a template, use this syntax:




From an action, use:

$this->logMessage('help me!', 'info');


In both of these examples, the first parameter is the string to log and the second parameter is the severity level of the message. The possible messages levels are:

emerg
alert
crit
err
warning
notice
info
debug

The functions above are helpful proxy functions to the real logging methods. If you are not in an action or a template, you can create a log message this way:

sfContext::getInstance()->getLogger()->info('qmchenry was here');


In this case, the message level is determined by the function called at the end of that chain. To create a critical message, substitute crit() for info().