Smart way to disable/enable logs on demand in Rails - ruby-on-rails

Question

I'm running a Rails app (v 3.1.10) on a Heroku Cedar stack with Papertrail add-on going crazy because of the size of the logs.
My app is really verbose and the logs are getting huge (really huge):
Sometimes because I serialize a lots of data in one field and that makes a huge SQL request. In my model I have many:
serialize :a_game_data, Hash
serialize :another_game_data, Hash
serialize :a_big_set_of_game_data, Hash
[...]
Thanks to my AS3 Flash app working with bigs sets of json...
Sometimes because there's a lots of partials to render:
Rendered shared/_flash_message.html.erb (0.1ms)
Rendered shared/_header_cart_info.html.erb (2.7ms)
Rendered layouts/_header.html.erb (19.4ms)
[...]
It's not the big issue here, but I've added this case too because Jamiew handle it, see below...
Sometimes because there's lots of sql queries on the same page:
User Load (2.2ms) SELECT "users".* FROM "users" WHERE "users"."id" = 1 LIMIT 1
Course Load (5.3ms) SELECT "courses".* FROM "courses" WHERE (id = '1' OR pass_token = NULL)
Session Load (1.3ms) SELECT "sessions".* FROM "sessions" WHERE "sessions"."id" = 1 LIMIT 1
Training Load (1.3ms) SELECT "trainings".* FROM "trainings" WHERE "trainings"."id" = 1 LIMIT 1
[...]
It's a big (too) complex App we've got here... yeah...
Sometimes because there's a lots of params:
Parameters: {"_myapp_session"=>"BkkiJTBhYWI1MUVlaVdtbE9Eb1Y2I5BjsAVEkiEF9jc3JmX3Rva2VlYVWZyM2I0dEZaR1YwNXFjZhZTQ1uBjsARkkiUkiD3Nlc3Npb25faWQGOgZFRhcmRlbi51c2yN1poVm8vdWo3YTlrdUZzVTA9BjsARkkiH3dAh7CMTQ0Yzc4ZDJmYzg5ZjZjOGQ5NVyLmFkbWluX3VzZXIua2V5BjsAVFsISSIOQWRtaW5Vc2VyBjsARlsGaQZJIiIkMmEkMTAkcmgvQ2Rwc0lrYzFEbGJFRG9jMnZvdQY7AFRJIhl3YXJkZW4udXNlci51c2VyLmtleQY7AFRbCEkiCVVzZXIGOwBGWwZpBkkiIiQyYSQxMCRBUFBST2w0aWYxQmhHUVd0b0V5TjFPBjsAVA==--e4b53a73f6b622cfe7550b2ee12678712e2973c7", "authenticity_token"=>"EeiWmlODoYXUfr3b4tFZGV05qr7ZhVo/uj7a9kuFsU0=", "utf8"=>"✓", "locale"=>"fr", "id"=>"1", "a"=>1, "a"=>1, "a"=>1, "a"=>1, "a"=>1, "a"=>1, [...] Hey! You've reach the end of the line but it's not the end of the parameters...}
The AS3 Flash app send big json data to the controller...
I didn't mention the (in)famous "Assets pipeline logging problem" because now I'm using the quiet_assets gem to handle this:
https://github.com/evrone/quiet_assets
So... what did I try?
1: Dennis Reimann's middleware solution:
http://dennisreimann.de/blog/silencing-the-rails-log-on-a-per-action-basis/
2: Spagalocco's gem (inspired by solution #1):
https://github.com/spagalloco/silencer
3: jamiew's monkeypatches (inspired by solution #1 + a bonus):
https://gist.github.com/1558325
Nothing is really working as expected but it's getting close.
I would rather use a method in my ApplicationController like this:
def custom_logging(opts={}, show_logs=true)
disable_logging unless show_logs
remove_sql_requests_from_logs if opts[:remove_sql_requests]
remove_rendered_from_logs if opts[:remove_rendered]
remove_params_from_logs if opts[:remove_params]
[...]
end
...and call it in any controller method: custom_logging({:remove_sql_requests=>1, :remove_rendered=>1})
You got the idea.
So, is there any good resource online to handle this?
Many thanks for your advices...

Answer 1

I"m the author of the silencer gem mentioned above. Are you looking to filter logging in general or for a particular action? The silencer gem handles the latter problem. While you can certainly use it in different ways, it's mostly intended for particular actions.
It sounds like what you are looking for less verbose logging. I would recommend you take a look at lograge. I use that in production in most of my Rails apps and have found it to be quite useful.
If you need something more specialized, you may want to look at implementing your own LogSubscriber which is essentially the lograge solution.

Answer 2

Set your log level in the Heroku enviroment
View your current log level:
heroku config
You most likely have "Info", which is just a lot of noise
Change it to warn or error
heroku config:add LOG_LEVEL=WARN
Also, when viewing the logs, only specify the "app" server
heroku logs --source app
I personally, append --tail to see the logs live.
heroku logs --source app --tail