distribution/context/doc.go
Stephen J Day 530afa5234 Add WithVersion to context and other cleanup
By adding WithVersion to the context package, we can simplify context setup in
the application. This avoids some odd bugs where instantiation order can lead
to missing instance.id or version from log messages.

Signed-off-by: Stephen J Day <stephen.day@docker.com>
2015-09-14 17:14:31 -07:00

89 lines
3.9 KiB
Go

// Package context provides several utilities for working with
// golang.org/x/net/context in http requests. Primarily, the focus is on
// logging relevent request information but this package is not limited to
// that purpose.
//
// The easiest way to get started is to get the background context:
//
// ctx := context.Background()
//
// The returned context should be passed around your application and be the
// root of all other context instances. If the application has a version, this
// line should be called before anything else:
//
// ctx := context.WithVersion(context.Background(), version)
//
// The above will store the version in the context and will be available to
// the logger.
//
// Logging
//
// The most useful aspect of this package is GetLogger. This function takes
// any context.Context interface and returns the current logger from the
// context. Canonical usage looks like this:
//
// GetLogger(ctx).Infof("something interesting happened")
//
// GetLogger also takes optional key arguments. The keys will be looked up in
// the context and reported with the logger. The following example would
// return a logger that prints the version with each log message:
//
// ctx := context.Context(context.Background(), "version", version)
// GetLogger(ctx, "version").Infof("this log message has a version field")
//
// The above would print out a log message like this:
//
// INFO[0000] this log message has a version field version=v2.0.0-alpha.2.m
//
// When used with WithLogger, we gain the ability to decorate the context with
// loggers that have information from disparate parts of the call stack.
// Following from the version example, we can build a new context with the
// configured logger such that we always print the version field:
//
// ctx = WithLogger(ctx, GetLogger(ctx, "version"))
//
// Since the logger has been pushed to the context, we can now get the version
// field for free with our log messages. Future calls to GetLogger on the new
// context will have the version field:
//
// GetLogger(ctx).Infof("this log message has a version field")
//
// This becomes more powerful when we start stacking loggers. Let's say we
// have the version logger from above but also want a request id. Using the
// context above, in our request scoped function, we place another logger in
// the context:
//
// ctx = context.WithValue(ctx, "http.request.id", "unique id") // called when building request context
// ctx = WithLogger(ctx, GetLogger(ctx, "http.request.id"))
//
// When GetLogger is called on the new context, "http.request.id" will be
// included as a logger field, along with the original "version" field:
//
// INFO[0000] this log message has a version field http.request.id=unique id version=v2.0.0-alpha.2.m
//
// Note that this only affects the new context, the previous context, with the
// version field, can be used independently. Put another way, the new logger,
// added to the request context, is unique to that context and can have
// request scoped varaibles.
//
// HTTP Requests
//
// This package also contains several methods for working with http requests.
// The concepts are very similar to those described above. We simply place the
// request in the context using WithRequest. This makes the request variables
// available. GetRequestLogger can then be called to get request specific
// variables in a log line:
//
// ctx = WithRequest(ctx, req)
// GetRequestLogger(ctx).Infof("request variables")
//
// Like above, if we want to include the request data in all log messages in
// the context, we push the logger to a new context and use that one:
//
// ctx = WithLogger(ctx, GetRequestLogger(ctx))
//
// The concept is fairly powerful and ensures that calls throughout the stack
// can be traced in log messages. Using the fields like "http.request.id", one
// can analyze call flow for a particular request with a simple grep of the
// logs.
package context