morgan

HTTP request logger middleware for Express — log incoming requests with timing, status codes, and response sizes.

morgan

Express

HTTP request logger middleware for Express — log incoming requests with timing, status codes, and response sizes.

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Bundle (gzip)

5.3 kB

14.0 kB raw

Install size includes transitive dependencies. Bundle size is gzipped browser payload.

Freshness

The Problem

Debugging Express APIs without request logs means flying blind — you can't see which routes are being hit, how long they take, or which requests are returning errors without adding console.log to every handler.

What It Does

Morgan logs HTTP requests in configurable formats. The built-in 'dev' format shows method, URL, status, response time, and size in a color-coded one-liner. The 'combined' format matches Apache's production log format for ingestion by log aggregators. Custom tokens let you log any request/response property.

Installation

bash

npm install morgan
npm install -D @types/morgan

Usage Example

typescript

import express from 'express';
import morgan from 'morgan';
import fs from 'fs';
import path from 'path';

const app = express();

// Colorized development logging
app.use(morgan('dev'));

// Production: write to rotating log file
const accessLog = fs.createWriteStream(path.join(__dirname, 'access.log'), { flags: 'a' });
app.use(morgan('combined', { stream: accessLog }));

// Custom format with request ID
morgan.token('id', (req: any) => req.id);
app.use(morgan(':id :method :url :status :response-time ms'));

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