Configuring Jetty Request Logs

Configuring Jetty Request Logs
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Constructing a Request Log Entry
Implementing a Request Log
Configuring a Request Log
Configuring a Separate Request Log For a Web Application

Request logs are a record of the requests that the server has processed. There is one entry per request received, and commonly in the standard NCSA format, so you can use tools like Webalizer to analyze them conveniently.

Constructing a Request Log Entry

A standard request log entry includes the client IP address, date, method, URL, result, size, referrer and user agent, for example:


 123.4.5.6 - - [27/Aug/2004:10:16:17 +0000]
  "GET /jetty/tut/XmlConfiguration.html HTTP/1.1"
  200 76793 "http://localhost:8080/jetty/tut/logging.html"
  "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040614 Firefox/0.8"

Implementing a Request Log

Jetty provides an implementation called NCSARequestLog which supports the NCSA format in files that you can roll over on a daily basis.

The Logback Project offers another implementation of a RequestLog interface, providing rich and powerful HTTP-access log functionality.

If neither of these options meets your needs, you can implement a custom request logger by implementing Jetty's RequestLog.java interface and plugging it in similar to the NCSARequestLog, as shown below.

Configuring a Request Log

To configure a single request log for the entire Jetty Server instance:

<Set name="handler">
  <New id="Handlers" class="org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.HandlerCollection">
    <Set name="handlers">
      <Array type="org.eclipse.jetty.server.Handler">
        <Item>
          <New id="Contexts" class="org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.ContextHandlerCollection"/>
        </Item>
        <Item>
          <New id="DefaultHandler" class="org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.DefaultHandler"/>
        </Item>
        <Item>
          <New id="RequestLog" class="org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.RequestLogHandler"/>
        </Item>
      </Array>
    </Set>
  </New>
</Set>
<Ref refid="RequestLog">
  <Set name="requestLog">
    <New id="RequestLogImpl" class="org.eclipse.jetty.server.NCSARequestLog">
      <Arg><SystemProperty name="jetty.logs" default="./logs"/>/yyyy_mm_dd.request.log</Arg>
      <Set name="retainDays">90</Set>
      <Set name="append">true</Set>
      <Set name="extended">false</Set>
      <Set name="LogTimeZone">GMT</Set>
    </New>
  </Set>
</Ref>

The equivalent code is:

HandlerCollection handlers = new HandlerCollection();
ContextHandlerCollection contexts = new ContextHandlerCollection();
RequestLogHandler requestLogHandler = new RequestLogHandler();
handlers.setHandlers(new Handler[]{contexts,new DefaultHandler(),requestLogHandler});
server.setHandler(handlers);
 
NCSARequestLog requestLog = new NCSARequestLog("./logs/jetty-yyyy_mm_dd.request.log");
requestLog.setRetainDays(90);
requestLog.setAppend(true);
requestLog.setExtended(false);
requestLog.setLogTimeZone("GMT");
requestLogHandler.setRequestLog(requestLog);

This configures a request log in $JETTY_HOME/logs with filenames including the date. Old log files are kept for 90 days before being deleted. Existing log files are appended to and the extended NCSA format is used in the GMT timezone.

To examine many more configuration options, see NCSARequestLog.java

Configuring a Separate Request Log For a Web Application

To configure a separate request log for a web application, add the following to the context xml file.

<Configure class="org.eclipse.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext">
  ...
  <Set name="handler">
    <New id="RequestLog" class="org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.RequestLogHandler">
      <Set name="requestLog">
        <New id="RequestLogImpl" class="org.eclipse.jetty.server.NCSARequestLog">
          <Set name="filename"><Property name="jetty.logs" default="./logs"/>/test-yyyy_mm_dd.request.log</Arg>
          <Set name="filenameDateFormat">yyyy_MM_dd</Set>
          <Set name="LogTimeZone">GMT</Set>
          <Set name="retainDays">90</Set>
          <Set name="append">true</Set>
        </New>
      </Set>
    </New>
  </Call>
  ...
</Configure>