How to log something in Rails in an independent log file?

Question

In rails I want to log some information in a different log file and not the standard development.log or production.log. I want to do this logging from a model class.

Answer 1

Define a logger class in (say) app/models/special_log.rb:

class SpecialLog
  LogFile = Rails.root.join('log', 'special.log')
  class << self
    cattr_accessor :logger
    delegate :debug, :info, :warn, :error, :fatal, :to => :logger
  end
end

initialize the logger in (say) config/initializers/special_log.rb:

SpecialLog.logger = Logger.new(SpecialLog::LogFile)
SpecialLog.logger.level = 'debug' # could be debug, info, warn, error or fatal

Anywhere in your app, you can log with:

SpecialLog.debug("something went wrong")
# or
SpecialLog.info("life is good")