How can I get a console readout at runtime in an application?

Question

For debugging purposes, I\'d like to access console printouts at runtime in a way similar to the Console app current on the App Store (that can be found here).

I did

Answer 1

If your device is attached to Xcode, you can see console output (NSLogs and such) in the debug area:

If you're running the app and connecting to Xcode later, I believe you can get console logs in the Organizer.

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Edit: to access the log file at runtime, you should try /var/log/system.log — but even better I recommend using a custom debug function, which would write to the system log and/or a text view in your app. (Check out NSLogv, which will be useful when writing a wrapper function.) This also has the advantage of letting you disable all debug logs from one place (just change your debug function).

Answer 2

You can do so using <asl.h>. Here is an example that I threw together to create an array of console messages.

-(NSArray*)console
{
    NSMutableArray *consoleLog = [NSMutableArray array];

    aslclient client = asl_open(NULL, NULL, ASL_OPT_STDERR);

    aslmsg query = asl_new(ASL_TYPE_QUERY);
    asl_set_query(query, ASL_KEY_MSG, NULL, ASL_QUERY_OP_NOT_EQUAL);
    aslresponse response = asl_search(client, query);

    asl_free(query);

    aslmsg message;
    while((message = asl_next(response)) != NULL)
    {
        const char *msg = asl_get(message, ASL_KEY_MSG);
        [consoleLog addObject:[NSString stringWithCString:msg encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
    }
    if (message != NULL) {
        asl_free(message);
    }
    asl_free(response);
    asl_close(client);

    return consoleLog;
}