Make RoR log to database in addition to production.log

Rails
1

Folks,

Crawling through my production.log file is a pain. Is there any way I
can have rails log all this information to a database table, instead
of, or in addition to the production.log file? Ideally the DB table
would have separate columns for some of the log details, like IP
address, controller, action, errors, trace, etc. The idea is that I
could then filter the log data to quickly see hits on a particular
action, or from a particular IP address, etc.

I know I could parse production.log and throw it in the database, but
I’d prefer to have that done up front without the need for a log
parser.

Thanks

2

jszobody wrote:

Folks,

Crawling through my production.log file is a pain. Is there any way I
can have rails log all this information to a database table, instead
of, or in addition to the production.log file? Ideally the DB table
would have separate columns for some of the log details, like IP
address, controller, action, errors, trace, etc. The idea is that I
could then filter the log data to quickly see hits on a particular
action, or from a particular IP address, etc.

I know I could parse production.log and throw it in the database, but
I’d prefer to have that done up front without the need for a log
parser.

Thanks

There is no functionality like that currently in Rails, but it wouldn’t
be hard to write it yourself (and even release it as a plugin!)

Something with a general idea like:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
after_filter :log_request_to_db

private
  def log_request_to_db
    LogEntry.create(
      :uri => request.request_uri,
      :date => Time.now,
      # populate other useful attributes here
    )
  end

end

3

Have you thought of using something like, google analytics, splunk or
the rails log analyzer?

4

Have you thought of using something like, google analytics, splunk or
the rails log analyzer?

5

I’m doing this in one of my apps…

I have a method in my application helper that displays the number of
hits
(ya, i know, old school hit counter, but what client wants, client
gets).
So, anyway, in addition to keeping up with the current hit count, I log
the
header data to the db.

module ApplicationHelper
def hit_counter
log = Log.new
log.log_type = ‘hit’
log.datetime = Time.now
log.save

controller.request.env.each do |header|
  log_detail = LogDetail.new
  log_detail.log_id = log.id
  log_detail.detail_key    = header[0]
  log_detail.detail_value  = header[1]
  log_detail.save
    end

log.id + 34873

end
…
…
…

class CreateLogs < ActiveRecord::Migration
def self.up
create_table :logs do |t|
t.column :log_type, :string
t.column :misc, :string
t.column :datetime, :timestamp
end

create_table :log_details do |t|
  t.column :log_id,   :integer, :null => false
  t.column :detail_key,      :string
  t.column :detail_value,    :string
end

log = Log.new
log.log_type  = 'debug'
log.misc      = "Initial log creation"
log.save

end

def self.down
drop_table :logs
drop_table :log_details
end
end

…

add_index :log_details, [:detail_key, :detail_value]

I can’t comment on how performant this will be as this hasn’t been in
production for very long. If you find a better solution, I’d like to
hear
about it.

–
James M.