Logging user activity

[Jack Dangler]

On 2/7/22 5:09 PM, Peter J. Holzer wrote:
> On 2022-02-06 23:30:41 -0800, blessy carol wrote:
>> I have this task where I have to create log files to record user
>> activity whenever they make an entry or view something. Also, I have
>> to create Database log file whenever someone accessed or manipulated
>> the data in the database. The code is written python and used django
>> framework. I've connected django with oracle cloud database. So now I
>> want to if the basic logging details can be used to store the record
>> of these activities in the log file in the server.
> There are three places where you can do that in a centralized manner:
>
> 1. In the database itself. AFAIK Oracle has an audit system, but I've
>     never used it.
> 2. At the Django ORM layer. Django has the ability to log all database
>     queries it makes
> 3. At the web request level. Your web server (probably) already logs
>     every request but not necessarily the information you are interested
>     in. But you could write a piece of middleware for your Django which
>     extracts log-worthy information and logs that.
>
> The first two options are probably too low-level, and especially the
> second is really hard to interpret in an automated manner (which is what
> you probably want to do - otherwise why log in the first place?)
>
> So I'd try the third option. But it really depends a lot on the
> structure of your application on whether it's feasible to extract all
> the data you need at that point. It's possible that you will have to go
> through all the views in your app, see what data they are requesting and
> altering and craft appropriate log messages for each.
>
>          hp
>
>
Short of a long lesson on why software developers should always think of 
logging/monitoring components to everything they write, I'll just offer 
this. It's worth the read and should put you in a good position to 
complete your task.

https://www.askpython.com/django/django-logging

If you're after something that you're being paid to do, look into 
Splunk! It's a robust package that offers logging and correlation of 
data on nearly any level of complication/sophistication your customers need.

Hope this helps.

Regards

Jack