Using logging in python and django to record user interactions with a website

Question

I'm currently working on helping with the development of a website. Someone this past weekend attempted to hack into the website, but failed. However, since the entire site was rewritten this last summer, there was no way to store their movements within the site and to catch the user's IP before they gave up.

Is there a way to track a users actions (such as which links they visit) while in a website and store it into a file (the website is small) in order to make sure we have a record of the actions, if anyone ever attempts to hack it again?

To see if I could do this, I started using logging, but ran into issues with how exactly I am supposed to record the users actions with logging. My setup is below, and it works, I just don't know what to put in place of the string currently inside of logging.info() to record the movements of the user. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

from ipware.ip import get_ip
import logging

def IPCatcher(request):
    ip = get_ip(request)
if ip is not None:
    print("We have an IP address for user")
    print(ip)
    logging.basicConfig(filename='log_recording.txt',
                        level=logging.DEBUG,format='%(asctime)s %(message)s',
                                                          datefmt='%m/%d/%Y %I:%M:%S %p')
    logging.info('This is working')

else:
    print("we don't have an IP address for user")

Right now I'm not using apache due to security and am thinking about nginx but are currently not using either. Would nginx help in this situation? — Scott.F
– Scott.F, Commented Oct 10, 2017 at 23:55

markwalker_ · Accepted Answer · 2017-10-10 22:42:47Z

1

Logging in Django can be fairly daunting at first, but there's plenty to read up on around the web. To give you an overview, the easiest way to setup logging in django is to start with your settings.py file where you configure the logging;

LOGGING = {
    'version': 1,
    'disable_existing_loggers': False,
    'handlers': {
        'file': {
            'level': 'DEBUG',
            'class': 'logging.FileHandler',
            'filename': '/path/to/django/debug.log',
        },
        'mail_admins': {
            'level': 'ERROR',
            'class': 'django.utils.log.AdminEmailHandler',
        }
    },
    'loggers': {
        'django': {
            'handlers': ['file'],
            'level': 'DEBUG',
            'propagate': True,
        },
        'my_app': {
            'handlers': ['file'],
            'level': 'DEBUG',
            'propagate': True,
        },
    },
}

Replace my_app with your app label & then in your view the logging call will log to the file handler (note the mail_admins handler which will send an email to settings.ADMINS).

import logging

from ipware.ip import get_ip

# This gets a named logger, which should match your appname
logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)  

def IPCatcher(request):
    ip = get_ip(request)
    if ip is not None:
        logger.info('This is working')

I'd also recommend watching this for a tutorial on the subject; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsbtPqQdo3Q

answered Oct 10, 2017 at 22:42

markwalker_

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2 Comments

Scott.F Over a year ago

Thank you very much for the help!

markwalker_ Over a year ago

@scottyboy I meant to add as well, you can use a rotating file similar to apache logs. Take a look here for that; djangosnippets.org/snippets/2980

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