CloverConnector connecting to Clover Mini before calling initializeConnection

[DyegoCosta]

SDK v1.4.2

I just noticed the CloverConnector is establishing a connection with the Clover Mini right after I add any listener to it, before calling ICloverConnector#initializeConnection.

To reproduce:

1. Instantiate CloverConnector
2. Add a sales listener to it (e.g)
3. Wait for the onDeviceReady to be called
4. Call ICloverConnector#sale
5. Proceed with the sale normally (no initializeConnection called)

Is this the expected behaviour? If so, what should initializeConnection be used for?

[david-clover-com]

@DyegoCosta, no, this is not the expected behavior and I cannot reproduce it. Using the remote-pay-cloud-starter I commented out the line where initializeConnection is called as expected onDeviceReady is never called. There must be something else going on.

[DyegoCosta]

@david-clover-com Thanks, I found the issue!

I was calling initialize on the connector so I could start listen to it's logger before calling initializeConnection.

const newCloverConnector = (rawDeviceConfig) => {
  const cloverConnectorFactory = buildConnectorFactory()
  const deviceConfig = buildCloverDeviceConfig(rawDeviceConfig)

  const connector = cloverConnectorFactory.createICloverConnector(deviceConfig)
  connector.initialize(deviceConfig)
  connector.device.logger.on('log', logCloverDeviceMessage.bind(this, connector))

  return connector
}

Do you have any tip on how to properly listen to the Connector's logs? Or should it be done like that after initializeConnection?

[david-clover-com]

Does:
clover.DebugConfig.loggingEnabled = true;

work for you?

[DyegoCosta]

@david-clover-com I already do that, and it works to send logs to the console, but I need a way to listen to the logs so I can redirect them to a log management service provider.

Something like this:

  connector.device.logger.on('log', logCloverDeviceMessage.bind(this, connector))

^ this works but with the side effect of initializing the connection early

[david-clover-com]

I see. The short answer is that because the device is not created until initialize/initializeConnection is called, you cannot cleanly intercept calls to the device's logger before that time. This is probably the approach you want to take as the logging you may miss is likely minimal and not material. The long, ugly, and not recommended answer is that the Logger is publicly exposed and could be intercepted. However this would introduce an ugly dependency on the Connector's inner API. Something like this should work:

  const logCreator = clover.Logger["create"];
        clover.Logger["create"] = () => {
            const log = logCreator();
            log.on("log", () => {
                 // intercept hook, 'arguments' will contain the info being logged.
            });
            return log;
        };

[DyegoCosta]

Thanks @david-clover-com! I'll weight my options here after some tests.

It would be great if the SDK provided a more straight forward logging API. I see there's a lot of logger instances and took me a while to find the correct one I want to watch. (e.g connector.logger, connector.broadcaster.logger, connector.device.logger.

[david-clover-com]

Thanks for the feedback. I created an internal issue for us to improve our log framework.

[DyegoCosta]

@david-clover-com I noticed we can use onDeviceConnected and get the same result I had before doing the early initialization. We'll get all the entries of the WS.