So, I’m relatively new to ignition, but have enough experience to know that logging can be difficult at times, at least in perspective apps. So, I made a logger component that I thought I’d share in case it helps someone else (or in case people can tell me how I’ve over engineered another problem 
):
The startup script for the component instantiates a singleton object which stores a reference to the component (sort of a singleton. I used a borg pattern I found mentioned around the web in a few places. I’m new to Python cough I mean Jython too). Here’s my script file, simply named logger:
import datetime
debugTagPath = "[default]Debug_" + system.util.getProjectName()
loggerDockName = "Logger"
class Borg:
_shared_state = {}
def __init__(self):
self.__dict__ = self._shared_state
class Logger(Borg):
def __init__(self, componentInstance = None):
Borg.__init__(self)
if componentInstance:
self.componentInstance = componentInstance
def log(self, msg):
if hasattr(self, 'componentInstance') and system.tag.exists(debugTagPath) and system.tag.readBlocking([debugTagPath])[0].value == True:
self.componentInstance.params.text = logTimestamp() + str(msg) + "\n" + self.componentInstance.params.text
system.perspective.openDock(loggerDockName)
def log(msg):
Logger().log(msg)
def logTimestamp():
return '[' + datetime.datetime.now().strftime("%m/%d/%Y %X.%f")[:-3] + ']: '
And here’s the startup script for the logger component:
def runAction(self):
"""
Method that will run whenever the selected event fires.
Arguments:
self: A reference to the component that is invoking this function.
"""
logger.Logger(self)
It also makes use of boolean memory tags to check if it’s in a debug environment or not. My project has several copies for versioning, some of which are dev or testing, and some are production. So the boolean memory tags are named Debug_<project_name>, so that a project can check if it should produce logs.
The component itself is nothing special, just a text area with text bound to view.params.text, as well as Clear and Close buttons
I mounted the component in the south dock, with display: onDemand and handle: hide. Then, I can place logger.log('Hey folks!') somewhere in a script, and Voila!:
It’s still nowhere near as lean and unobtrusive as console.log statements, but it has helped me quite a bit so far, so I thought I’d share!
