Sign In to the Console
AWS Lambda
Developer Guide

AWS Documentation » AWS Lambda » Developer Guide » Building Lambda Functions with Node.js » AWS Lambda Function Logging in Node.js

AWS Lambda Function Logging in Node.js

Your Lambda function comes with a CloudWatch Logs log group, with a log stream for each instance of your function. The runtime sends details about each invocation to the log stream, and relays logs and other output from your function's code.

To output logs from your function code, you can use methods on the console object, or any logging library that writes to stdout or stderr. The following example logs the values of environment variables and the event object.

Example index.js File – Logging

exports.handler = async function(event, context) {
  console.log("ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES\n" + JSON.stringify(process.env, null, 2))
  console.log("EVENT\n" + JSON.stringify(event, null, 2))
  return context.logStreamName
};

Example Log Format

START RequestId: c793869b-ee49-115b-a5b6-4fd21e8dedac Version: $LATEST
2019-06-07T19:11:20.562Z	c793869b-ee49-115b-a5b6-4fd21e8dedac	INFO	ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
{
  "AWS_LAMBDA_FUNCTION_VERSION": "$LATEST",
  "AWS_LAMBDA_LOG_GROUP_NAME": "/aws/lambda/my-function",
  "AWS_LAMBDA_LOG_STREAM_NAME": "2019/06/07/[$LATEST]e6f4a0c4241adcd70c262d34c0bbc85c",
  "AWS_EXECUTION_ENV": "AWS_Lambda_nodejs10.x",
  "AWS_LAMBDA_FUNCTION_NAME": "my-function",
  "PATH": "/var/lang/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin/:/bin:/opt/bin",
  "NODE_PATH": "/opt/nodejs/node10/node_modules:/opt/nodejs/node_modules:/var/runtime/node_modules",
  ...
}
2019-06-07T19:11:20.563Z	c793869b-ee49-115b-a5b6-4fd21e8dedac	INFO	EVENT
{
  "key": "value"
}
END RequestId: c793869b-ee49-115b-a5b6-4fd21e8dedac
REPORT RequestId: c793869b-ee49-115b-a5b6-4fd21e8dedac	Duration: 170.19 ms	Billed Duration: 200 ms 	Memory Size: 128 MB	Max Memory Used: 73 MB

The Node.js runtime logs the START, END, and REPORT lines for each invocation. It adds a timestamp, request ID, and log level to each entry logged by the function.

You can view logs in the Lambda console, in the CloudWatch Logs console, or from the command line.

Viewing Logs in the AWS Management Console

The Lambda console shows log output when you test a function on the function configuration page. To view logs for all invocations, use the CloudWatch Logs console.

To view your Lambda function's logs

  1. Open the Logs page of the CloudWatch console.

  2. Choose the log group for your function (/aws/lambda/function-name).

  3. Choose the first stream in the list.

Each log stream corresponds to an instance of your function. New streams appear when you update your function and when additional instances are created to handle multiple concurrent invocations. To find logs for specific invocations, you can instrument your function with X-Ray, and record details about the request and log stream in the trace. For a sample application that correlates logs and traces with X-Ray, see Error Processor Sample Application for AWS Lambda.

Using the AWS CLI

To get logs for an invocation from the command line, use the --log-type option. The response includes a LogResult field that contains up to 4 KB of base64-encoded logs from the invocation. 

$ aws lambda invoke --function-name my-function out --log-type Tail
{
    "StatusCode": 200,
    "LogResult": "U1RBUlQgUmVxdWVzdElkOiA4N2QwNDRiOC1mMTU0LTExZTgtOGNkYS0yOTc0YzVlNGZiMjEgVmVyc2lvb...",
    "ExecutedVersion": "$LATEST"
}

You can use the base64 utility to decode the logs. 

$ aws lambda invoke --function-name my-function out --log-type Tail \
--query 'LogResult' --output text |  base64 -d
START RequestId: 57f231fb-1730-4395-85cb-4f71bd2b87b8 Version: $LATEST
  "AWS_SESSION_TOKEN": "AgoJb3JpZ2luX2VjELj...", "_X_AMZN_TRACE_ID": "Root=1-5d02e5ca-f5792818b6fe8368e5b51d50;Parent=191db58857df8395;Sampled=0"",ask/lib:/opt/lib",
END RequestId: 57f231fb-1730-4395-85cb-4f71bd2b87b8
REPORT RequestId: 57f231fb-1730-4395-85cb-4f71bd2b87b8  Duration: 79.67 ms      Billed Duration: 100 ms         Memory Size: 128 MB     Max Memory Used: 73 MB

The base64 utility is available on Linux, macOS, and Ubuntu on Windows. For macOS, the command is base64 -D.

To get full log events from the command line, you can include the log stream name in the output of your function, as shown in the preceding example. The following example script invokes a function named my-function and downloads the last five log events.

Example get-logs.sh Script

This example requires that my-function returns a log stream ID. 

aws lambda invoke --function-name my-function --payload '{"key": "value"}' out
sed -i 's/"//g' out
sleep 15
aws logs get-log-events --log-group-name /aws/lambda/my-function --log-stream-name=file://out --limit 5

The script uses sed to remove quotes from the output file, and sleeps for 15 seconds to allow time for the logs to be available. The output includes the response from Lambda and the output from the get-log-events command. 

$ ./get-log.sh
{
    "StatusCode": 200,
    "ExecutedVersion": "$LATEST"
}
{
    "events": [
        {
            "timestamp": 1559763003171,
            "message": "START RequestId: 4ce9340a-b765-490f-ad8a-02ab3415e2bf Version: $LATEST\n",
            "ingestionTime": 1559763003309
        },
        {
            "timestamp": 1559763003173,
            "message": "2019-06-05T19:30:03.173Z\t4ce9340a-b765-490f-ad8a-02ab3415e2bf\tINFO\tENVIRONMENT VARIABLES\r{\r  \"AWS_LAMBDA_FUNCTION_VERSION\": \"$LATEST\",\r ...",
            "ingestionTime": 1559763018353
        },
        {
            "timestamp": 1559763003173,
            "message": "2019-06-05T19:30:03.173Z\t4ce9340a-b765-490f-ad8a-02ab3415e2bf\tINFO\tEVENT\r{\r  \"key\": \"value\"\r}\n",
            "ingestionTime": 1559763018353
        },
        {
            "timestamp": 1559763003218,
            "message": "END RequestId: 4ce9340a-b765-490f-ad8a-02ab3415e2bf\n",
            "ingestionTime": 1559763018353
        },
        {
            "timestamp": 1559763003218,
            "message": "REPORT RequestId: 4ce9340a-b765-490f-ad8a-02ab3415e2bf\tDuration: 26.73 ms\tBilled Duration: 100 ms \tMemory Size: 128 MB\tMax Memory Used: 75 MB\t\n",
            "ingestionTime": 1559763018353
        }
    ],
    "nextForwardToken": "f/34783877304859518393868359594929986069206639495374241795",
    "nextBackwardToken": "b/34783877303811383369537420289090800615709599058929582080"
}

Deleting Logs

Log groups aren't deleted automatically when you delete a function. To avoid storing logs indefinitely, delete the log group, or configure a retention period after which logs are deleted automatically.