Bot Builder Logging

Table of Contents

• Install
• Peer dependencies
• Usage
  • Attach the middleware
  • Error handling
  • Write custom logs
  • Store WAV files for IVR bots
  • Options
• What is logged?
• Extending the data store

Install

This package is compatible with Bot Framework SDK version 3.x. If you are using Bot Framework 4.x please switch to botbuilder-logging@preview.

npm install botbuilder-logging

Peer dependencies

npm install documentdb azure-storage botbuilder

azure-storage is used to store binary data, which is typically only used in IVR bots. If you are not using an IVR bot, you can safely omit this peer dependency.

Usage

Attach the middleware

Attach a BotLogger middleware instance to your UniversalBot to automatically persist all bot Activity objects.

const { ChatConnector, UniversalBot  } = require('botbuilder');
const { BotLogger, writeLog } = require('botbuilder-logging');
const { DocumentClient } = require('documentdb');

// your documentdb instance
const documentdb = new DocumentClient(process.env.DDB_URI, {
  masterKey: process.env.DDB_KEY
});

// your chat connector
const connector = new ChatConnector({
    appId: process.env.MicrosoftAppId,
    appPassword: process.env.MicrosoftAppPassword
});

// your bot
const bot = new UniversalBot(connector, (session) => {
    session.send(`You said: ${session.message.text}`);
});

// attach logging middleware
bot.use(new BotLogger(documentdb, {
  documents: {
    databaseName: 'bot',
    collectionName: 'logs',
  },
}));

Error handling

Log messages are pushed into a queue to avoid blocking the request, so errors are not available from the calling code.

Instead, attach an error event handler at the time the BotLogger is created

botLogger.events.on('error', (err) => console.error(err));

Write custom logs

Use the writeLog function to persist arbitrary payloads from within your bot logic.

const { BotLogger, writeLog } = require('botbuilder-logging');

bot.dialog('greetings', [
  (session) => {
    builder.Prompts.text(session, 'Hi! What is your name?');
  },
  (session, results) => {
    writeLog(session, 'info', results); // log the response
    session.endDialog(`Hello ${results.response}!`);
  },
]);

Store WAV files for IVR bots

IVR bots can be configured to collect raw audio streams, which can be stored by this logger. To enable blob storage, pass an azure-storage instance in the BotLogger constructor:

const { BlobService } = require('azure-storage');

const blobService = new BlobService(process.env.BLOB_ACCOUNT, process.env.BLOB_KEY);

// attach logging middleware with blob instance
bot.use(new BotLogger(documentdb, {
  documents: {
    databaseName: 'bot',
    collectionName: 'logs',
  },
  blobs: {
    blobService,
    options: { container: 'botblobs' }
  }
}));

Any available audio data will automatically be stored in the configured blob container using a value of { $blob: 'URI' } where URI points to your blob storage account and includes a Shared Access Signature (SAS).

Options

The full definition of the BotLogger options is:

interface BotLoggerOptions {

  /** Document Db options */
  documents: {

    /** DocumentDb database name (created if it does not exist) */
    databaseName: string;

    /** DocumentDb collection name (created if it does not exist) */
    collectionName: string;

    /** Default configuration for created collections */
    defaults?: {

      /** Collection throughput for created collections */
      collectionThroughput?: number;

      /** Default time-to-live for created collections */
      ttl?: number;

      /** Partition key to use, if the collection is partitioned */
      partitionKey?: string;
    };
  };

  /** Azure Storage configuration */
  blobs: {

    /** Azure BlobService instance that will write media attachments */
    blobService: BlobService;

    /** Azure Storage options */
    options: {

      /** Blob container where media attachments will be stored */
      containerName: string;

      /** Use this shared access policy when linking log events to media blobs (default: read-only, expires in year 2099) */
      sasPolicy?: SharedAccessPolicy;
    },
  },

  /** Number of simultaneous writes before queueing (default: 1) */
  concurrency?: number;

  /** Any properties that should NOT be visible in logs (e.g. "state.user.private.password"). For supported syntax, see `lodash.get` module. */
  maskedProperties?: string[];
}

What is logged?

All of the available properties on each incoming and outbound Activity are automatically stored by the middleware.

The TypeScript interface for stored log entries is defined as

interface LogEntry {
  date: Date;
  conversation: Partial<IAddress>;
  type: string;
  data: any;
}

• date is an ISO 8601 formatted string.
• conversation is the ConversationAccount object associated with the log message. Use this object to correlate log messages for a given conversation or user.
• type may be one of the standard Bot Framework activity types, or it may be a user-defined string for custom log entries
• data may be either an activity object, or it may be any arbitrary object for custom log entries.

The serializer has special handling for certain JavaScript types found in the data property:

• A function is stored as { $function: null }
• An Error object is stored as { $error: { name: err.name, message: err.message, stack: err.stack } }
• A Buffer object is stored as { $blob: 'URI' }, where URI is a string that points to a stored blob
• A Date object is stored as its .toISOString() value
• Any other object (besides a plain Object or Array) is stored as { $object: null }

Nested objects are stored recursively using Object.keys

Extending the data store

To persist logs in other stores, extend the BaseBotLogger class, providing your own DocumentWriter and BlobWriter implementations.