Daily log files in Laravel 4

With Laravel 4.1 all the application logs started being saved to a single log file called laravel.log. This change is great if you want to tail the logs (plus there's the new handly artisan command php artisan tail, which you can also use with remote servers), but not so great if you intend to have a big log file. Now, hopefully this isn't because your application has a lot of errors, but you might want to log events that occur just for safekeeping or to keep a history of what is happening. For example, one application I'm woking on logs out all hits to our registration API endpoint, to have a record of the data passed just in case something horrific goes wrong.

Anyway, have a look in your app/start/global.php file. If you started with Laravel 4.1 (or updated completely from 4.0), you'll see something like this:

Log::useFiles(storage_path().'/logs/laravel.log');

However, to get daily log files instead, simply update the code to this:

$logFile = 'log-'.php_sapi_name().'.txt';

Log::useDailyFiles(storage_path().'/logs/'.$logFile);

Now, every day you'll have a unique log file that includes the server name that is running your app. Easy!

Of course, if you want to change the names that are used, simply edit the $logFile variable.