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Log all interaction with user to the DB

Author:
inuwashi
Posted:
January 17, 2011
Language:
Python
Version:
1.1
Score:
1 (after 1 ratings)

Due to compliance requirements in the financials industry we needed to log every request a user made to our system, the action taken (view function) and response from the server.

I found a lot of other logging solution bit most revolved around debugging and DB query logging. I needed to be able to tell what a user did while being logged in as much detail as I could with out tracking the mouse pointer position on screen.

So I created this (, my first ,) middleware. Its very simple really. keeping track of a request, view_func and response object in a single model called Record (models.py file included in the code).

The fields I used are optimized to what I intend to show in the UI I am planning for this model. Depending on how you use the doc string of your views they can be tapped to explain to the user what each request/func/responce group in a session is meant to do.

There were a few gotcha's: 1. I only care about authenticated requests. So I added the 'quest.user.is_authenticated()' test. 2. I did not care about the favicon request so I skipped them. 2. The actual login request is not authenticated while the response is. This caused the process_response/view to look for a record that is not there. So I added the 'except ObjectDoesNotExist' to skip this case.

I added one bell: Logging a full HTML reply is wasteful and mostly useless. I added two values in the setting files. LOGALL_LOG_HTML_RESPONSE to toggle if we want to log them or not. And LOGALL_HTML_START to describe what a full HTML starts with. Personally I use the first few characters of my base.html template that all the rest of my templates expend. I simplified the code to the left for readability. 

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#settings.py

#Should we log full HTML responses?
LOGALL_LOG_HTML_RESPONSE = True

# If we how do we recognized a full HTML response 
LOGALL_HTML_START = "<!DOCTYPE html"


#logAll.models.py
from django.db import models

from django.contrib.auth.models import User

class Record(models.Model):
    """
    Basic log record describing all user interaction with the UI.
    Will be propagated by a middle ware.
    This will be one BIG DB table!
    """
    created_at = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add = True)
    sessionId = models.CharField(max_length=256)

    requestUser = models.ForeignKey(User)
    requestPath  = models.TextField()
    requestQueryString = models.TextField()
    requestVars = models.TextField()
    requestMethod = models.CharField(max_length=4)
    requestSecure = models.BooleanField(default=False)
    requestAjax = models.BooleanField(default=False)
    requestMETA = models.TextField(null=True, blank=True)
    requestAddress = models.IPAddressField()

    viewFunction = models.CharField(max_length=256)
    viewDocString = models.TextField(null=True, blank=True)
    viewArgs = models.TextField()

    responseCode = models.CharField(max_length=3)
    responseContent = models.TextField()




#logAll.middleware.py

import time
import simplejson as json

from django.core.exceptions import ObjectDoesNotExist

from logAll.models import Record
from settings import LOGALL_LOG_HTML_RESPONSE, LOGALL_HTML_START

class LogAllMiddleware(object):

    def process_request(self,request):
        # Only log requests of authinticate users                                                                                                                                                               
        try:
            if not request.user.is_authenticated():
                return None
        except AttributeError:
            return None

        # Skip favicon requests cause I do not care about them
        if request.path =="/favicon.ico":
            return None

        newRecord = Record(
            created_at = str(time.time()),
            sessionId = request.session.session_key,

            requestUser = request.user,
            requestPath  = request.path,
            requestQueryString = request.META["QUERY_STRING"],
            requestVars = json.dumps(request.REQUEST.__dict__),
            requestMethod = request.method,
            requestSecure = request.is_secure(),
            requestAjax = request.is_ajax(),
            requestMETA = request.META.__str__(),
            requestAddress = request.META["REMOTE_ADDR"],
            )

        newRecord.save()

        return None

    def process_view(self, request, view_func, view_args, view_kwargs):
        try:
            if not request.user.is_authenticated():
                return None
        except AttributeError:
            return None

        # Fix the issue with the authrization request                                                                                                                                                        
        try:
            theRecord  = Record.objects.get(
                sessionId = request.session.session_key,
                requestUser = request.user,
                requestPath  = request.path,
                requestMethod = request.method,
                requestSecure = request.is_secure(),
                requestAjax = request.is_ajax(),
                requestMETA = request.META.__str__()
                )
            theRecord.viewFunction = view_func.func_name
            theRecord.viewDocString = view_func.func_doc
            theRecord.viewArgs = json.dumps(view_kwargs)

            theRecord.save()
        except  ObjectDoesNotExist:
            pass

        return None


    def process_response(self, request, response):

        # Only log autherized requests
        try:
            if not request.user.is_authenticated():
                return response
        except AttributeError:
            return response

        # Skip favicon requests cause I do not care about them
        if request.path =="/favicon.ico":
            return response


        # Fix the issue with the authorization request                                                                                                                                                                          
        try:
            theRecord  = Record.objects.get(
                sessionId = request.session.session_key,
                requestUser = request.user,
                requestPath  = request.path,
                requestMethod = request.method,
                requestSecure = request.is_secure(),
                requestAjax = request.is_ajax(),
                requestMETA = request.META.__str__()
                )

            theRecord.responseCode = response.status_code

            # Decidce wether we want to log the a full html response
            # as this will probabaly will take a LOT of space.
            #
            # In my case most of the replies I want to catch happen
            # to be plain text ajax replies

            if LOGALL_LOG_HTML_RESPONSE:
                # IF set to true then log the respoce regardless                                                                                                                                                               
                theRecord.responseContent = response.content
            elif response.content.startswith(LOGALL_HTML_START):
                theRecord.responseContent = "FULL HTML RESPONSE"
            else:
                theRecord.responseContent = response.content

            theRecord.save()

        except  ObjectDoesNotExist:
            pass

        return response

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Comments

dudus (on January 19, 2011):

Wont you log request datetime?

#

code_shogan (on February 20, 2011):

line 150 to 156 with the code block that begins if LOGALL_LOG_HTML_RESPONSE:` looks a little strange, in fact it may as well look like this...

if response.content.startswith(LOGALL_HTML_START):
    theRecord.responseContent = "FULL HTML RESPONSE"
else:
    theRecord.responseContent = response.content

at the moment regardless of what LOGALL_LOG_HTML_RESPONSE is your code just like my example above calls theRecord.responseContent = response.content anyway.

I don't think this is what you wanted...

#

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