django-requestlogs

django-requestlogs is a package providing middleware and other helpers for audit logging. The middleware collects information about request-response cycle into log entries. The collected information can be fully customized, but the out-of-the-box implementation includes

• user ID and username
• request (path, method, payload..)
• response (status code, payload..)
• general information, such as timestamp, execution time

Finally the log entry is stored in predefined storage, which by default is configurable using Django's logging system.

Once installed, log storage should start showing entries such as the following:

{'action_name': None, 'execution_time': '00:00:00.024900', 'timestamp': '2019-07-01T07:05:34.217703Z', 'ip_address': None, 'request': OrderedDict([('method', 'GET'), ('full_path', '/'), ('data', '{}'), ('query_params', '{}')]), 'response': OrderedDict([('status_code', 200), ('data', '{"ok": true}')]), 'user': OrderedDict([('id', 1), ('username', 'admin')])}

Note that to get IP address logged as well, the optional dependency django-ipware must be installed.

Motivation

django-requestlogs attempts to provide tools for implementing audit logging (audit trail) to systems that require such feature. These systems typically must have the ability to tell "what information the end-user has accessed (and what information was sent to the system)?". django-requestlogs hooks into the Django REST framework in the simplest way possible while logging every request without the need of remembering to enable it for each view separately.

Currently django-requestlogs package is primarily focusing on working seamlessly with Django REST framework. While plain Django requests are also collected, storing their request and response payloads is not fully supported.

Requirements

• Django (1.11, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 3.0)
• Django REST framework

Optional dependencies:

• django-ipware
  • if installed, this is used for storing end-user's IP address

Installation

Install using pip:

pip install django-requestlogs

Add 'requestlogs.middleware.RequestLogsMiddleware' to MIDDLEWARE settings.

MIDDLEWARE = [
    ...
    'requestlogs.middleware.RequestLogsMiddleware',
]

Set 'requestlogs.views.exception_handler' as rest_framework's exception handler (this will make sure requestlog entry has all possible data available about the request in case of a 500 error):

REST_FRAMEWORK={
    ...
    'EXCEPTION_HANDLER': 'requestlogs.views.exception_handler',
}

The middleware is now ready to start storing requestlog entries using the default STORAGE_CLASS, which in fact just uses Python logger named requestlogs. Now you can, for example, redirect these logs to a file with the following LOGGING configuration:

LOGGING = {
    'version': 1,
    'disable_existing_loggers': False,
    'handlers': {
        'requestlogs_to_file': {
            'level': 'INFO',
            'class': 'logging.FileHandler',
            'filename': '/tmp/requestlogs.log',
        },
    },
    'loggers': {
        'requestlogs': {
            'handlers': ['requestlogs_to_file'],
            'level': 'INFO',
            'propagate': False,
        },
    },
}

Settings

Requestlogs can be customized using Django settings. The following shows the default values for the available settings:

REQUESTLOGS = {
    'STORAGE_CLASS': 'requestlogs.storages.LoggingStorage',
    'ENTRY_CLASS': 'requestlogs.entries.RequestLogEntry',
    'SERIALIZER_CLASS': 'requestlogs.storages.BaseEntrySerializer',
    'SECRETS': ['password', 'token'],
    'ATTRIBUTE_NAME': '_requestlog',
    'METHODS': ('GET', 'PUT', 'PATCH', 'POST', 'DELETE'),
}

• STORAGE_CLASS
  • Path to the Python class which will handle storing the log entries. Override this if you only need to reimplement the storage mechanism. This may be the case e.g. when choosing what data to store.
• ENTRY_CLASS
  • Path to the Python class which handles the construction of the complete requestlogs entry. Override this for full customization of the requestlog entry behaviour.
• SERIALIZER_CLASS
  • Path to the serializer class which is used to serialize the requestlog entry before storage. By default this is a subclass of rest_framework.serializers.Serializer.
• SECRETS
  • List of keys in request/response data which will be replaced with '***' in the stored entry.
• ATTRIBUTE_NAME
  • django-requestlogs internally attaches the entry object to the Django request object, and uses this attribute name. Override if it causes collisions.
• METHODS
  • django-requestlogs will handle only HTTP methods defined by this setting. By default it handles all HTTP methods.

Logging with Request ID

django-requestlogs also contains a middleware and logging helpers to associate a request-specific identifier (uuid) to logging messages. This aims to help distinguishing messages to certain request-response cycle, which can be useful in an application that receives a high number of requests.

The request id is added to the standard logging messages (Django application logs) by specifying a custom formatter and using the provided logging filter. The request id can be stored to requestlog entries as well. The middleware to enable the request id logging does not require the core requestlogs middleware to be installed.

Under the hood the request id is implemented with help of threading.local().

Installation

The feature is enabled by adding requestlogs.middleware.RequestIdMiddleware to the MIDDLEWARE setting:

MIDDLEWARE = [
    ...
    'requestlogs.middleware.RequestLogsMiddleware',
    'requestlogs.middleware.RequestIdMiddleware',
]

Once installed, the application logs should start showing messages with a format such as the following:

2019-07-18 11:56:07,261 INFO 954fb004fb404751a2fa33326101442c urls:31 Handling GET request
2019-07-18 11:56:07,262 DEBUG 954fb004fb404751a2fa33326101442c urls:32 No parameters given
2019-07-18 11:56:07,262 INFO 954fb004fb404751a2fa33326101442c urls:33 All good

To add the request id to requestlog entries as well, you can use the provided serializer class as a starting point:

REQUESTLOGS = {
    ...
    'SERIALIZER_CLASS': 'requestlogs.storages.RequestIdEntrySerializer',
}

Configuration

The middleware has some additional configuration possiblities:

REQUESTLOGS = {
    ...
    'REQUEST_ID_HTTP_HEADER': 'X_DJANGO_REQUEST_ID',
    'REQUEST_ID_ATTRIBUTE_NAME': 'request_id',
}

• REQUEST_ID_HTTP_HEADER
  • If set, the value of this request header is used as request id (instead of it being randomly generated). This must be a valid uuid. One use case for this feature is in microservice architecture, where a micreservice calls another, internal microservice. Having the log messages of both applications to be formatted with same request id might be the preferred outcome.
• REQUEST_ID_ATTRIBUTE_NAME
  • The attribute name which is used internally to attach request id to threading.locals(). Override if it causes collisions.

To add the request id to logging messages of your Django application, use the provided logging filter and include request_id to the log formatter. Here is the complete logging configuration:

LOGGING = {
    'version': 1,
    'disable_existing_loggers': False,
    'handlers': {
        'requestlogs_to_file': {
            'level': 'INFO',
            'class': 'logging.FileHandler',
            'filename': '/tmp/requestlogs.log',
        },
        'root': {
            'class': 'logging.StreamHandler',
            'filters': ['request_id_context'],
            'formatter': 'verbose',
        },
    },
    'loggers': {
        '': {
            'handlers': ['root'],
            'level': 'DEBUG',
        },
        'requestlogs': {
            'handlers': ['requestlogs_to_file'],
            'level': 'INFO',
            'propagate': False,
        },
    },
    'filters': {
        'request_id_context': {
            '()': 'requestlogs.logging.RequestIdContext',
        },
    },
    'formatters': {
        'verbose': {
            'format': '%(asctime)s %(levelname)s %(request_id)s %(module)s:%(lineno)s %(message)s'
        },
    },
}