collective.logbook 0.8

Advanced Persistent Error Log

collective.logbook

Author:

Ramon Bartl

Version:

0.8

collective.logbook add-on provides advanced persistent error logging for the open source Plone CMS.

Table of Contents

• collective.logbook

  • Lastest Build Status

  • Compatibility

  • Installation

  • Usage

  • Web hooks

  • Motivation

• Changelog

  • 0.8 (2017-01-27)

  • 0.8b2 (2016-10-24)

  • 0.8b1 (2016-10-21)

  • 0.7 (2014-06-12)

  • 0.6 (2011-11-28)

  • 0.5 (2011-08-16)

  • 0.4 (2010-08-02)

  • 0.3.1 (2009-03-18)

  • 0.3 (2009-03-17)

  • 0.2 (2009-03-17)

  • 0.1 - Unreleased

Lastest Build Status

Master Branch https://github.com/collective/collective.logbook

Compatibility

collective.logbook works with Plone 4 and Plone 5.

Installation

These instructions assume that you already have a Plone buildout that’s built and ready to run.

Edit your buildout.cfg file and look for the eggs key in the instance section. Add collective.logbook to that list. Your list will look something like this:

eggs =
    ...
    collective.logbook

Run buildout.

Activate the add-on via Site Setup > Add ons.

Usage

With collective.logbook enabled, it is simple to see all errors occured in your Plone site:

>>> portal = self.getPortal()
>>> browser = self.getBrowser()
>>> browser.addHeader('Authorization', 'Basic admin:secret')

Remember some URLs:

>>> portal_url = portal.absolute_url()
>>> logbook_controlpanel_url = portal_url + "/@@logbook-controlpanel"
>>> logbook_test_error_url = portal_url + "/@@error-test"
>>> logbook_url = portal_url + "/@@logbook"

Browse to the @@logbook view:

>>> browser.open(logbook_url)
>>> 'Congratulations, there are 0 Errors in your Plone Site!' in browser.contents
True

Now lets create an error with the @@error-test view:

>>> browser.open(logbook_test_error_url)
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
HTTPError: HTTP Error 500: Internal Server Error

>>> browser.open(logbook_url)
>>> "There are 1 saved (unique) Tracebacks and 0 referenced Tracebacks" in browser.contents
True

The same error will be referenced:

>>> browser.open(logbook_test_error_url)
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
HTTPError: HTTP Error 500: Internal Server Error

>>> browser.open(logbook_url)
>>> "There are 1 saved (unique) Tracebacks and 1 referenced Tracebacks" in browser.contents
True

There is also a @@random-error-test view, which randomly selects different tracebacks for testing.

Logbook logging can be deactivated on purpose in the @@logbook-controlpanel view:

>>> browser.open(logbook_controlpanel_url)
>>> browser.getControl(name="form.widgets.logbook_enabled:list").value = []
>>> browser.getControl(name="form.buttons.save").click()

Errors should not be logged anymore:

>>> browser.open(logbook_test_error_url)
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
HTTPError: HTTP Error 500: Internal Server Error

>>> browser.open(logbook_url)
>>> "There are 1 saved (unique) Tracebacks and 1 referenced Tracebacks" in browser.contents
True

Finally, we remove all errors:

>>> browser.open(logbook_url)
>>> browser.getControl(name="form.button.deleteall").click()
>>> 'Congratulations, there are 0 Errors in your Plone Site!' in browser.contents
True

Settings

See Site Setup for logbook settings at http://your-plone-site/@@logbook-controlpanel

Inspecting errors

After install, go to http://your-plone-site/@@logbook

The errors are logged there. You can tune some parameters.

Testing

collective.logbook provides a view error-test which Site managers can access to generate a test traceback.

First visit @@error-test and make sure the error appears in @@logbook view.

Note

You might need to turn on both Logbook enabled and Large site in Logbook Site Setup. This may be a bug regarding new Plone versions and production mode.

Web hooks

collective.logbook provides ability to HTTP POST error message to any web service when an error happens in Plone. This behavior is called a web hook.

Use cases

• Showing Plone errors real-time in Skype chat

• Routing errors to different websites and services via Zapier

In Site Setup > Logbook you can enter URLs where HTTP POST will be asynchronously performed on a traceback. HTTP POST payload is an message from Logbook, containing a link for further information.

Note

Currently repeated errros (same traceback signature) are not POST’ed again. You will receive message only once unless until you clear logbook contents in @@logbook management view.

Motivation

For anonymous users Plone generates an Error Page which contains an error number. But what to do with this error number?

You have to log into your plone site, go to the ZMI, check the error_log object and probably construct the url by hand to get the proper error with this error number, like:

http://your-plone-site/error_log/showEntry?id=1237283091.10.529903983894

If you are lucky, you will find the error. If not, and the number of occured errors exceeded the number of exceptions to keep, or maybe a cronjob restarted your zope instance, then….

Hmm, not really smooth this behaviour.

Wouldn’t it be better to have a nice frontend where you can paste the error number to a field and search for it? Keep all log persistent, also when zope restarts? Keep only unique errors and not thousand times the same Error? Get an email when a new, unique error occured, so you know already what’s going on before your customer mails this error number to you?

If you think that this would be cool, collective.logbook is what you want:)

SiteErrorLog Patch

collective.logbook patches the raising method of Products.SiteErrorLog.SiteErrorLog:

from Products.SiteErrorLog.SiteErrorLog import SiteErrorLog

_raising = SiteErrorLog.raising

def raising(self, info):
    enty_url = _raising(self, info)
    notify(ErrorRaisedEvent(self, enty_url))
    return enty_url

The patch fires an ErrorRaisedEvent event before it returns the enty_url. The entry url is the link to the standard SiteErrorLog like:

http://your-plone-site/error_log/showEntry?id=1237283091.10.529903983894

The patch gets _only_ then installed, when you install collective.logbook over the portal_quickinstaller tool and removes the patch, when you uninstall it.

You can also deactivate the patch over the logbook configlet of the plone control panel.

Log Storage

The default storage is an annotation storage on the plone site root:

<!-- default storage adapter -->
<adapter
    for="*"
    factory=".storage.LogBookStorage"
  />

The default storage adapter creates 2 PersistentDict objects in your portal. One ‘main’ storage and one ‘index’ storage, which keeps track of referenced errors.

The storage will be fetched via an adapter lookup. So the more specific adapter will win. Maybe an SQL storage with SQLAlchemy would be nice here:)

Notify Event

When a new unique error occurs, an INotifyTraceback event gets fired. An email event handler is already registered with collective.logbook:

<subscriber
    for=".interfaces.INotifyTraceback"
    handler=".events.mailHandler"
  />

This handler will email new tracebacks to the list of email adresses specified in the logbook configlet of the plone control panel.

Configuration

collective.logbook now uses Plone 5’s registry to store its configuration. It has 3 configuration keys:

• logbook.logbook_log_mails

• logbook.logbook_large_site

• logbook.logbook_webhook_urls

These properties take the values you enter in logbook configlet in the plone control panel.

The first one is used to email new tracebacks to these email addresses.

The second one changes some behaviour for large sites.

The third one does an HTTP POST to some URLs when an error occurs.

Changelog

0.8 (2017-01-27)

• Complete Code Rework, Cleanup and Refactoring for Plone 4/5 Compatibility. [ramonski]

• add Plone 5.0 pypi classifier, update README.rst to mention Plone 5 compatibility [tkimnguyen]

0.8b2 (2016-10-24)

• Cleanup/doc update for Plone 5 version [glemignot]

0.8b1 (2016-10-21)

• Initial port to Plone 5 [glemignot]

0.7 (2014-06-12)

• Fixed tests [ramonski]

• Add Plone4.3-compatibility. [WouterVH]

• Added Web Hook support [miohtama, sevanteri]

0.6 (2011-11-28)

• Log exceptions within exception handler [jfroche]

• Move delete all button, add show all button, show error message if error was not found. [jfroche]

• Add option that disable browsing stored errors. This option become useful if you have a site with many errors. [jfroche]

0.5 (2011-08-16)

• Move storage to OOBTree to avoid that logging error transactions get bigger and bigger. Add upgradehandler accordingly. [gotcha]

• Fix saving configuration. [gotcha]

• Logging initialization at startup time was broken with Zope 2.13 at least. [gotcha]

• Added support for i18n [macagua]

• Added support for Spanisn translation [macagua]

• Move the mail notifier into a view to use a template for better HTML email handling. [rossp]

• Include the REQUEST HTML for more useful debugging and troubleshooting. [rossp]

0.4 (2010-08-02)

• Add “z3c.autoinclude.plugin” entry point, so in Plone 3.3+ you can avoid loading the ZCML file. [WouterVH]

• expose send mail exception to the log message this fixes http://plone.org/products/collective.logbook/issues/3 [naro]

• fixed email notification for plone4 since MailHost.send signature changed (see Upgrade Information) [fRiSi]

• store and show user and date for referenced errors too this fixes http://plone.org/products/collective.logbook/issues/2 [fRiSi]

0.3.1 (2009-03-18)

• the error handler now starts a new transaction before saving it into the logbook [ramonski]

0.3 (2009-03-17)

• 0.2 release was broken, sorry for this re-release [ramonski]

• fixed issues which caused some ugly Database Conflict errors [ramonski]

• removed all Zope2.app() stuff [ramonski]

• mail handler stops when no emails specified [ramonski]

• fixed uninstall method of properties [ramonski]

0.2 (2009-03-17)

• added a configlet for plone control panel [ramonski]

• added a default notify traceback email handler [ramonski]

• added propert install/uninstall methods for the SiteErrorLog patch [ramonski]

• added 2 properties in the application root [ramonski]

0.1 - Unreleased

• Initial release [ramonski]