Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Then restart Apache to enable the new logging directives. After your web server receives
a few requests, take a look at the
test_log
file. Verify that the contents are as you expect,
then feed the file to
httpdlog.pl
:
%
/usr/local/apache/bin/httpdlog.pl test_log
After
httpdlog.pl
finishes, take a look at the
httpdlog
table to make sure that it looks
correct. Once you're satisfied, tell Apache to send log entries directly to
httpdlog.pl
by
modifying the
CustomLog
directive as follows:
CustomLog "|/usr/local/apache/bin/httpdlog.pl" mysql
The
|
character at the beginning of the pathname tells Apache that
httpdlog.pl
is a
program, not a file. Restart Apache and new entries should appear in the
httpdlog
table
as visitors request pages from your site.
Nothing you have done to this point changes any logging you may have been doing
originally. For example, if you were logging to an
access_log
file before, you still are now,
so Apache is sending entries both to the original logfile and to MySQL. If that's what
you want, fine. Apache doesn't care if you log to multiple destinations, but you'll use
more disk space. To disable file logging, disable your original
CustomLog
directive and
restart Apache.
Analyzing the logfile
Now that Apache is logging into the database, what you do with the information depends
on what you want to know. Here are some questions MySQL can answer easily:
• How many requests were received?
SELECT
COUNT
(
*
)
FROM
httpdlog
;
• How many different client hosts sent requests?
SELECT
COUNT
(
DISTINCT
host
)
FROM
httpdlog
;
• How many different pages did clients request?
SELECT
COUNT
(
DISTINCT
url
)
FROM
httpdlog
;
• What are the 10 most popular pages?
SELECT
url
,
COUNT
(
*
)
AS
count
FROM
httpdlog
GROUP
BY
url
ORDER
BY
count
DESC
LIMIT
10
;
• How many requests were received for
favicon.ico
files that certain browsers like to
check for?
SELECT
COUNT
(
*
)
FROM
httpdlog
WHERE
url
LIKE
'%/favicon.ico%'
;
• What is the range of dates spanned by the log?
SELECT
MIN
(
dt
),
MAX
(
dt
)
FROM
httpdlog
;
• How many requests were received each day?
