Log to database instead of log files

Question

I\'m interested in sending all Rails application logging to a database (MySQL or MongoDB) either in addition to or instead of to a log file. There are a few reasons, most of

Answer 1

Chris,

I think Dima's comment is important here. Are you satisfied with (1) having an access log in a DB (in real time), or (2) are you more interested in Rails/app-specific logging?

For (1), with Apache (at least), you can log to a database using piped logging.

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/logs.html#piped

I wrote a program that runs in the background waiting for input, which it parses and logs to a Postgres DB. My httpd.conf file pipes to this program with a CustomLog directive.

This is relatively simple to set up, and gives you all the obvious advantages of being able to analyze your logs in a DB. It works very well for me, especially for tracing what a user was doing just before an error. However, you have to protect against sql injection, buffer overflows, and other security issues in the logging program.

For (2), I am not a Rails developer so I can only talk about general approaches. If you want to log environment vars, or application data, or very selective bits of information, you could consider writing a web server module. Depending on your exact needs, you could also get by with some combination of conditional logging directives and filtering in the logging program.

It really comes down to whether you need a Rails-specific solution or a more general web-server-wide solution.