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DIY app cloud logging using AWS CloudWatch

· One min read
Mikael Finstad
Mikael Finstad
mifi

Need logging in your Electron app to the cloud but don't want to pay for services like Sentry, Papertrail, Bugsnag etc.?

AWS CloudWatch and Winston to the rescue!

  1. In your Electron main app, install and setup cloudwatch-winston.
  2. Create a log group in CloudWatch Logs
  3. In IAM, create a new user with only the following policy: (replace 123456789012 with your AWS account ID and my-cloudwatch-log-group with your desired log group name.)
{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "VisualEditor0",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "logs:CreateLogStream",
                "logs:DescribeLogGroups",
                "logs:DescribeLogStreams",
                "logs:PutLogEvents"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:logs:*:123456789012:log-group:my-cloudwatch-log-group",
                "arn:aws:logs:*:123456789012:log-group:my-cloudwatch-log-group:log-stream:*"
            ]
        }
    ]
}
  1. Copy the Access Key ID and Secret Acces Key and put it in cloudwatch-winston, and start logging 🪵🔥

Now if only Winston would work in the browser we could also do this from the web and maybe even from React Native...