django-debug-logging 0.2b1

Prerequisites

Django Debug Toolbar - This project is designed to work alongside the Django Debug Toolbar and extend its functionality to support logging.

Nexus - This is a pluggable admin app created by the Disqus team. It is used to present the UI for reviewing your debug logs.

Installation

Before you begin, make sure Django Debug Toolbar is configured and working properly.

Install the project with pip:

$ pip install django-debug-logging

Next, you’ll add debug_logging and nexus to your INSTALLED_APPS:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    ...
    'debug_logging',
    'nexus',
)

Now, you’ll need to replace the standard DebugToolbarMiddleware with a middleware that extends it to add logging functionality.

From your MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES setting, remove:

'debug_toolbar.middleware.DebugToolbarMiddleware',

Replace it with:

'debug_logging.middleware.DebugLoggingMiddleware',

Now, you’ll need to replace a few of the panels with extended versions that support logging. If you don’t want the data from any one of these panels to be logged, you can skip it.

From your DEBUG_TOOLBAR_PANELS setting, remove:

'debug_toolbar.panels.cache.CacheDebugPanel',
'debug_toolbar.panels.settings_vars.SettingsVarsDebugPanel',
'debug_toolbar.panels.sql.SQLDebugPanel',
'debug_toolbar.panels.timer.TimerDebugPanel',

Replace them with:

'debug_logging.panels.cache.CacheLoggingPanel',
'debug_logging.panels.settings_vars.SettingsVarsLoggingPanel',
'debug_logging.panels.sql.SQLLoggingPanel',
'debug_logging.panels.timer.TimerLoggingPanel',

There are also a couple of panels that are unique to Django Debug Logging that you may find convenient when logging data over time. If you’d like, you can add them to your DEBUG_TOOLBAR_PANELS setting:

'debug_logging.panels.revision.RevisionLoggingPanel',
'debug_logging.panels.identity.IdentityLoggingPanel',

Finally, run syncdb to create the models for statistic logging:

$ python manage.py syncdb

South migrations are included in case migrations are needed when upgrading to new versions.

If logging is enabled, any request to your site will result in a new row in the logging table. You probably don’t want to enable it during regular day-to-day development.

To enable logging, create a DEBUG_LOGGING_CONFIG setting that looks like this:

DEBUG_LOGGING_CONFIG = {
    'ENABLED': True,
}

To prevent any performance impact from the rendering of the Debug Toolbar, it is not shown.

Settings

There are a few optional DEBUG_LOGGING_CONFIG settings, as well.

• SQL_EXTRA: This setting determines whether the full details of each query are logged, or just the number of queries and the total time. It defaults to False.

• CACHE_EXTRA: This determines whether the full details of each cache call are logged, or just the summary details. It defaults to `` False``.

Running a Url Test

A management command is included that uses the test client to hit a list of urls in sequence, allowing them to be logged to the database. To use it, first create a list of urls with a new url on each line. Lines beginning with # are ignored.

Then, enable logging and run the log_urls management command:

$ python manage.py log_urls myapp/my_urls.txt

Unless it is run with a verbosity of 0, the command will output status such as urls that return status codes other than 200, and urls that raise errors.

Interface

The frontend interface uses the Nexus project from the Disqus team. Once Nexus is installed, make sure you add nexus/ to your urls:

(r'^nexus/', include(nexus.site.urls)),

Nexus should autodetect debug-logging, and the interface should be available at:

/nexus/debug-logging/

The Debug Logger will ignore requests made to this frontend interface, so your log won’t be clogged with information you have no use for.

To Do

• Create a model to group log records into ‘runs’, capturing start date and end date and aggregated stats. This will make it easier to run your url test repeatedly over time and see the impact of your changes.

• Graph the aggregated stats of the runs.

• [Maybe] Create a UI that is more user-friendly and not dependent on Nexus.