Exercise: Logger Trait

Let’s design a simple logging utility, using a trait Logger with a log method. Code that might log its progress can then take an &impl Logger. In testing, this might put messages in the test logfile, while in a production build it would send messages to a log server.

However, the StderrLogger given below logs all messages, regardless of verbosity. Your task is to write a VerbosityFilter type that will ignore messages above a maximum verbosity.

This is a common pattern: a struct wrapping a trait implementation and implementing that same trait, adding behavior in the process. In the “Generics” segment, we will see how to make the wrapper generic over the wrapped type.

// Copyright 2023 Google LLC
// SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0

trait Logger {
    /// Log a message at the given verbosity level.
    fn log(&self, verbosity: u8, message: &str);
}

struct StderrLogger;

impl Logger for StderrLogger {
    fn log(&self, verbosity: u8, message: &str) {
        eprintln!("verbosity={verbosity}: {message}");
    }
}

/// Only log messages up to the given verbosity level.
struct VerbosityFilter {
    max_verbosity: u8,
    inner: StderrLogger,
}

// TODO: Implement the `Logger` trait for `VerbosityFilter`.

fn main() {
    let logger = VerbosityFilter { max_verbosity: 3, inner: StderrLogger };
    logger.log(5, "FYI");
    logger.log(2, "Uhoh");
}