https://github.com/stylesuxx/apache-access-log-logger

https://github.com/stylesuxx/apache-access-log-logger

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• Host: GitHub
• URL: https://github.com/stylesuxx/apache-access-log-logger
• Owner: stylesuxx
• Created: 2014-01-19T03:27:39.000Z (almost 11 years ago)
• Default Branch: master
• Last Pushed: 2014-01-19T16:14:00.000Z (almost 11 years ago)
• Last Synced: 2023-03-13T08:15:44.952Z (over 1 year ago)
• Language: Python
• Size: 137 KB
• Stars: 0
• Watchers: 2
• Forks: 0
• Open Issues: 0
• Metadata Files:
  • Readme: readme.md

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README

        
## Apache Access Log Logger

Using the the Apache Access Log to log calls to non existing URL's. This is a cheap way of logging, where otherwise one would not have access to messages. For example to send debug messages from a script while a user is invoking it in his browser. Logging with the Apache Access Log also provides valueable information about the user like IP address, timestamp, the the user agent and and of course the failed URL. In this URL we can encode the information we want to pass.

### Setup

The only thing needed is an Apache webserver on which you have the rights to read the access log file.

### Building URL's

First of all you need an URL base path that would produce a 404 Error on the webserver. Somehing like this: http://example.com/non_existent/ now we append a tag to that base URL so we can easily identify from which context the Log entry was written. This would look something like this: http://example.com/non_existent/testcontext if the Tag itself would produce a 404 error it could directly be used as the base path too. You can now append as many key value pairs as you like. The only limitation is that keys have to be alphanumeric for example: http://example.com/non_existent/testcontext?key1=value_1&key2=value_2...&keyN=value_N

Such an URL con now easily be called via jQuery, by simply clicking a link or which ever other way you want to call an URL.

    $.get('http://example.com/non_existent/testcontext?key1=value_1');

    

This will now produce a 404 Error on the Apache webserver that will look like this:

    127.0.0.1:80 127.0.0.1 - - [19/Jan/2014:04:06:20 +0100] "GET /non_existent/testcontext?key1=value_1 HTTP/1.1" 404 435 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/31.0.1650.63 Safari/537.36"

This gives us a lot of information. IP address, a timestamp, the user agent and of course the data we submitted. But since reading those log entries is pain in the ass the next step beautifies them.

### Formatting the Log files

Simply call *format.py* with the tag you are looking for and the path to the log file:

    ./format.py testcontext /var/log/apache2/access.log

    

This will now produce an HTML file which you can then view in the browser. This comes in form of a sortable and filterable HTML table.

### Usage

    usage: format.py [-h] [-o OUT] TAG LOGFILE

    Search for a tag in the apache access log files and format it to sort and filterable HTML table.

    positional arguments:

      TAG                The tag to look for in the log

      LOGFILE            Path to logfile

    optional arguments:

      -h, --help         show this help message and exit

      -o OUT, --out OUT  Path of the output file