Log::LogLite Log::NullLogLite Copyright (c) 2001-2002 Ockham Technology N.V. & Rani Pinchuk. All rights reserved. This package is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. DESCRIPTION The Log::LogLite class helps us create simple logs for our application. The Lite suffix refers mainly to the ease of use of this class, although the class is quite simple anyway. Example for the use of the class: use Log::LogLite; my $LOG_DIRECTORY = "/where/ever/our/log/file/should/be"; my $ERROR_LOG_LEVEL = 6; # create new Log::LogLite object my $log = new Log::LogLite($LOG_DIRECTORY."/error.log", $ERROR_LOG_LEVEL); ... # we had an error $log->write("Could not open the file ".$file_name.": $!", 4); The line that is added to the log file might look like: [09/02/2001 13:02:07] <4> Could not open the file bla: no such file The Log::NullLogLiteThe class is derived from the `Log::LogLite' class and implement the Null Object pattern to let us to use the `Log::LogLite' class with null `Log::LogLite' objects. We might want to do that if we use a `Log::LogLite' object in our code, and we do not want always to actually define a `Log::LogLite' object (i.e. not always we want to write to a log file). In such a case we will create a `Log::NullLogLite' object instead of the `Log::LogLite' object, and will use that object instead. The object has all the methods that the `Log::LogLite' object has, but those methods do nothing. Thus our code will continue to run without any change, yet we will not have to define a log file path for the `Log::LogLite' object, and no log will be created. PREREQUISITES IO::LockedFile INSTALLATION Follow the standard installation procedure for Perl modules, which is to type the following commands: perl Makefile.PL make make test make install You'll probably need to do the last as root. AUTHOR NOTES Thess classes are used for quite a long time in our company. Yet, it is very new in CPAN. If there are problems, suggestions or comments - please email me. Rani Pinchuk rani@cpan.org