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https://github.com/aaugustin/django-userlog

Logs users' recent browsing history. Helpful for customer support and merciless spying.
https://github.com/aaugustin/django-userlog

Last synced: 2 months ago
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Logs users' recent browsing history. Helpful for customer support and merciless spying.

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README 

        
django-userlog

==============



Goals

-----



django-userlog is a lightweight solution to see in real-time how a given user

is browsing a Django website. The intended use case is live customer support.



(Note that "synchronized browsing" is a much better solution. Modern live

customer support solutions often provide this feature — if you can afford it!)



Requirements

------------



This application requires Django ≥ 1.8 and Python ≥ 3.3 or 2.7. It uses a

Redis server as storage backend.



Your website must be using Django's auth framework. The target user must be

authenticated and you must be able to obtain their username. How you achieve

this depends a lot on your project and on how you interact with the user.



Configuration

-------------



Install django-userlog and its dependencies in your project's virtualenv::



    pip install django-userlog

    pip install django-redis-cache hiredis redis



In order to use the live logs, you need some extra dependencies::



    pip install asyncio_redis websockets

    pip install asyncio                     # only for Python 3.3



If your project is running on Python ≥ 3.3, install everything in the same

virtualenv. If your project requires Python 2.7, either you can live with the

static logs, or you can create a separate virtualenv with Python ≥ 3.3 for the

websockets server that powers the live logs.



Add `'userlog'` to your `INSTALLED_APPS` setting.



Add `'userlog.middleware.UserLogMiddleware'` to your `MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES`

setting. It should come before any middleware that may change the response.



Configure a `'userlog'` cache with `django-redis-cache`_. (`django-redis`_

probably works too.) Define its `TIMEOUT` according to how long you want to

preserve a user's log after his last request. You should select a dedicated

Redis database or set a `KEY_PREFIX` to prevent clashes. Here's an example::



    CACHES = {

        'default': {

            'BACKEND': 'django.core.cache.backends.locmem.LocMemCache',

        },

        'userlog': {

            'BACKEND': 'redis_cache.RedisCache',

            'LOCATION': 'localhost:6379',

            'TIMEOUT': 3600,

            'KEY_PREFIX': 'userlog',

        },

    }



By default, django-userlog tracks no more than the latest 25 pages browsed by

each user. You can adjust this value with the `USERLOG_MAX_SIZE` setting.



If you don't intend to use the live logs, set `USERLOG_PUBLISH` to `False` to

decrease the workload of the Redis server.



You can exclude URLs from the logs by setting `USERLOG_IGNORE_URLS` to a list

of regular expression patterns::



    USERLOG_IGNORE_URLS = [

        r'^/favicon\.ico$',

    ]



In order to use the live logs, you must set the address of the websocket

server::



    USERLOG_WEBSOCKET_ADDRESS = 'ws://www.example.com:8080/'



.. _django-redis-cache: https://github.com/sebleier/django-redis-cache

.. _django-redis: https://github.com/niwibe/django-redis



Then you must run the websocket server at this address. The easiest solution

is to set the `DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE` environment variable and run the

`userlog.realtime` module::



    DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=myproject.settings python -m userlog.realtime



For more advanced use cases such as embedding the websocket server in an

application or adding TLS, serve the `userlog.realtime.userlog` with the

websockets_ library.



.. _websockets: https://github.com/aaugustin/websockets



Usage

-----



Open the Django admin. In the user logs section, choose between static logs or

live logs. Enter a username in the search field. That's it!



.. image:: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aaugustin/django-userlog/master/screenshot.png

    :width: 631

    :height: 518

    :align: center



Currently, only superusers can view user logs, for lack of a better solution.



FAQ

---



Why use Django's caching infrastructure to connect to Redis?

............................................................



It's the easiest way to obtain a properly managed connection to Redis,

including connection pooling.



Hacking

-------



If you want to suggest changes, please submit a pull request!



This repository includes a sample project. To try it, clone the repository,

create a virtualenv and run these commands::



    pip install -r requirements.txt

    pip install -e .

    DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=userlog.example_settings django-admin.py migrate

    DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=userlog.example_settings django-admin.py runserver



Once this basic setup is done, there's a shortcut to start the server::



    make example



And another one to start the websocket server::



    make realtime



Run the tests::



    make test



Compute test coverage::



    make coverage



Check your coding stye::



    make flake8



License

-------



django-userlog is released under the BSD license, like Django itself.