Vercel Logging is a vital aspect of managing serverless applications on Vercel. Imagine this: you encounter an issue with your application and need to access and analyze logs to pinpoint the problem swiftly. What if you could view and store these logs on Vercel, streamlining this process? This blog post will show you how to handle Vercel logging efficiently, gain insights, and enhance your application's performance.
Are you looking to streamline your Vercel logging process and enhance your application's performance? Alerty's NextJS logging tool can help you achieve your objectives, such as learning how to view and store logs on Vercel.
Logs are records of events on your computer, either by a person or a running process. It helps you track what happened and troubleshoot problems. Vercel is a cloud-based platform that simplifies developing and deploying front-end web applications. With Vercel, you can create high-performance applications without complex server management or infrastructure configuration, offering a seamless development experience.
One of the standout features of Vercel is its automatic scaling of web applications based on traffic, ensuring that your websites and applications remain speedy even during times of high traffic. As your application scales, you'll encounter more log data, but Vercel offers a range of monitoring and log analytics tools to help you quickly identify and resolve issues.
Build logs in Vercel are automatically generated during the application's build time. These logs detail the actions taken during the build process, such as:
Runtime logs in Vercel include all logs generated by serverless and edge function invocations, showcasing each action taken in a separate log entry. These logs are real-time and 4 KB per line, making it easy to review the output from your functions.
Activity logs in Vercel track the actions and activities of your team members, detailing who performed an action and when it occurred. These logs show information like:
To access the Vercel dashboard, you'll need to set up a Vercel account. This account will be your gateway to managing all aspects of Vercel, including logging.
Before diving into Vercel logging, ensure you have Node.js and npm installed on your local machine. These tools will streamline your setup process and make starting easier.
While not mandatory, having the Vercel CLI tool can be incredibly useful for managing logs from the command line. If you prefer a more hands-on approach to logging management, the Vercel CLI is worth considering.
To centralize and manage your Vercel logs effectively, you'll need to set up a logging integration. Popular options include:
Vercel also offers first-party integrations with some of these services for added convenience.
Vercel offers two convenient methods for checking log records: the Vercel CLI or the web dashboard interface.
Vercel provides a command-line tool to retrieve logs and view them locally. To use this tool, you must first install Vercel by executing the following command:
bash
npm i -g vercel
Once the installation process is complete, you can check the version of the installed Vercel CLI by running the following command:
bash
vercel --version
Next, run the following command to connect to a Vercel project:
bash
vercel
If this is your first time using the Vercel CLI, you will be prompted to log in to your account. Once you've logged in, you'll be asked a series of questions. Follow the instructions and be sure to link to an existing project (i.e., the Vercel project you just created).
To retrieve log records for a specific deployment, use the following command:
bash
vercel logs <deployment_url>
You will find the deployment URL on the Project page.
This command will only pull the build logs for the specified deployment. If you wish to view the corresponding runtime logs, add a --follow or -f flag so that Vercel watches for additional log output.
bash
vercel logs <deployment_url> -f
When you deploy your website to Vercel, the platform generates build logs showing deployment progress. The build logs contain information about:
Build logs are particularly useful for debugging issues that may arise during deployment. If a deployment fails, these can help you identify the root cause of the issue.
It's important to note that runtime logs in Vercel are only stored for a maximum of 1 hour. If you need to store logs long-term, you must rely on a third-party log management platform, which we will discuss in the next section.
You can find the activity logs by navigating to your team's homepage and selecting the activity tab.
Web vitals metrics, a feature offered by Vercel, allows you to monitor your application's performance by collecting real user metrics to estimate a score. This feature helps you understand how users interact with your application and provides valuable insights to improve overall performance. You can easily enable Web Vitals Metrics by following these steps:
To enable this feature, navigate to the analytics section on your Vercel dashboard. From here, you can access the performance analytics tab.
Once you are in the performance analytics tab, toggle the feature to enable performance analytics on your application. Vercel will prompt you to redeploy your project after enabling this feature.
After activating performance analytics, Vercel will ask you to redeploy your project. To initiate the redeployment process, simply follow the instructions provided.
Once the redeployment process is complete, Vercel will collect performance data every time a user visits your application. This data will help you evaluate your application's performance using real user metrics.
Enabling web vitals metrics on Vercel can help you better understand how users interact with your application and identify areas for improvement. Make sure to regularly review the performance data collected by Vercel to optimize your application and enhance the overall user experience.
Get started with Web Vitals Metrics on Vercel today and take your application's performance to the next level!
Vercel, a popular platform for deploying and hosting web applications, provides developers with valuable logging capabilities. While building and activity logs are stored indefinitely, runtime logs are only kept for one hour. To maintain these runtime logs for an extended period, users need to centralize and aggregate them using third-party log management platforms such as Alerty or solutions available on the Vercel marketplace.
Users can follow a straightforward integration process to connect Vercel projects with a logging tool available on the Vercel marketplace. By navigating to the log tool's integration page within the Vercel dashboard, developers can add the integration by selecting the desired Vercel project. This seamless connection allows logs to be efficiently sent to the chosen platform for further analysis and long-term storage.
Vercel’s configurable log drains present another effective method for centralizing logs. This feature enables users to direct logs to any endpoint URL via the HTTP protocol, offering greater flexibility compared to the limited integrations in the Vercel marketplace. With configurable log drains, users can:
This level of customization allows developers to tailor their logging setup to meet the specific requirements of their applications.
Developers can ensure that runtime logs generated by applications deployed on Vercel are efficiently aggregated and centralized for long-term storage and analysis. Whether integrating with logging tools from the Vercel marketplace or utilizing configurable log drains to send logs to custom endpoints, Vercel offers users flexibility in managing their application logs effectively.
Vercel's log drains feature makes it easy to pipe your deployment logs to a dedicated logging service like Alerty, Datadog, or Logflare. This allows you to centralize your logs, create alerts, and analyze them more effectively.
Use a structured logging library like Pino to ensure your logs are machine-readable, making them easier to search and analyze. Vercel's documentation mentions that console logs are wrapped in metadata, so structured logging can help you extract the relevant information.
Pay close attention to the logs for your Serverless Functions. It can provide valuable insights into performance, errors, and other issues. Vercel's functions tab makes it easy to inspect these logs quickly.
Vercel's improved build logs can help you understand how your source code is being built and deployed. Review these logs regularly to identify any potential issues or optimizations.
Take advantage of Vercel's integrations with logging providers like Alerty, LogDNA and Datadog. These tools offer advanced features like alerting, metrics, and log analysis that can complement Vercel's built-in logging capabilities.
Vercel's Observability suite includes features like Monitoring, Logs, and Speed Insights that can help you gain deeper insights into your application's performance and behavior.
Alerty is a cloud monitoring service tailored to developers and early-stage startups. It offers a comprehensive suite of features to ensure application smooth performance. Supporting popular technologies like NextJS, React, Vue, and Node.js, Alerty assists developers in identifying and fixing issues promptly.
With Alerty's universal service monitoring feature, dependencies such as Stripe API, OpenAI, and Vercel can be efficiently monitored, providing a holistic view of the application ecosystem.
Are you ready to catch issues before they affect your users and ensure optimal performance for your NextJS application with Alerty's advanced monitoring capabilities?