django-insider 0.1.8

The missing observability dashboard for Django.

Django Insider

The missing observability dashboard for Django.

Django Insider is a comprehensive observability suite that lives entirely inside your application. It provides a zero-config React dashboard to track performance, debug crashes with interactive stack traces, and detect inefficient database queries—all without sending your data to external third-party services.

---

✨ Features

📊 The Dashboard

A built-in React SPA (Single Page Application) that gives you a real-time pulse of your application.

• Velocity Charts: Visualize traffic spikes and error rates over the last 24 hours.
• Health Cards: Instant metrics on Server Errors (500s), Client Errors (400s), and Average Latency.
• Auto-Refresh: Data updates automatically every 30 seconds.

🕵️ The Investigation Room

A deep-dive debugging interface for crashes.

• Interactive Stack Trace: See exactly which file, line, and function caused an error.
• Context: View the user, URL, and timestamp associated with the crash.
• Forensics: Analyze system logs and database query counts for that specific request.

🐢 N+1 Query Detector

Automatically identify performance bottlenecks.

• Performance Risks: Flags endpoints executing excessive database queries.
• Metrics: Displays Path, Method, and Average Duration for slow views.

🔄 Request Replay

• Footprints: Detailed logs of every HTTP request (Headers, Body, Response).
• cURL Generator: One-click button to generate a curl command to instantly reproduce any failed request on your local machine.

---

📦 Installation

1. Install the package via pip:

pip install django-insider

2. Add to INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    # ... other apps
    "rest_framework", # Required dependency
    "insider",        # <--- Add this
]

3. Register the Middleware:

Add the interceptor to your MIDDLEWARE list. It is recommended to place it near the top but after SecurityMiddleware.

MIDDLEWARE = [
    "django.middleware.security.SecurityMiddleware",
    "insider.middleware.InsiderMiddleware",  # <--- Add this
    # ... other middleware
]

4. Configure URLs:

Add the Insider dashboard route to your project's urls.py:

from django.urls import path, include

urlpatterns = [
    # ...
    path("insider/", include("insider.urls")), # One-line setup
]

5. Run Migrations:

Create the necessary tables for logging errors and settings.

python manage.py migrate

6. Access the Dashboard:

Start your server and visit: http://localhost:8000/insider/

---

⚙️ Configuration

You can override the default behavior by adding an INSIDER_CONFIG dictionary to your settings.py.

INSIDER_CONFIG = {
    "CAPTURE_REQUEST_BODY": True,
    "SLOW_REQUEST_THRESHOLD": 500,
    "IGNORE_PATHS": ["/static/", "/health/"],
}

Traffic Filtering & Scope

Option	Default	Description
IGNORE_PATHS	['/static/', ...]	List of URL prefixes to exclude from monitoring.
IGNORE_ADMIN	True	If True, ignores all traffic to the Django Admin panel.
CAPTURE_METHODS	['GET', ...]	Whitelist of HTTP methods to record.

Data Capture & Privacy

Option	Default	Description
CAPTURE_REQUEST_BODY	False	Saves the raw JSON/Form body. Warning: Increases DB usage.
CAPTURE_RESPONSE	False	Saves the response body sent to the client. Keep False in production.
MASK_FIELDS	['password', ...]	Keys in headers/body to redact (replace with ********).
CAPTURE_USER	True	Records the ID/Username of the logged-in user.

Performance & Notifications

Option	Default	Description
SLOW_REQUEST_THRESHOLD	None	Latency (in ms) to flag a request as "Slow".
COOLDOWN_HOURS	24	Hours to wait before sending a repeat notification for the same error.
DB_ALIAS	'default'	The database connection name to use for logs.

---

🏗 Architecture

Insider operates on a Host-Guest architecture:

• The Host: Your Django Project.
• The Guest: The insider package.

It uses Celery to offload heavy logging tasks, ensuring your application's response time is not impacted by monitoring.

1. Middleware: Intercepts the request/response lifecycle.
2. Exception Hooks: Catches unhandled errors and generates "Incidences".
3. Async Tasks: Ships data to the database asynchronously via Celery.
4. Embedded Frontend: A compiled React app served directly by Django views.

---

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome!

1. Fork the repository.
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature).
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add some AmazingFeature').
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/AmazingFeature).
5. Open a Pull Request.

📄 License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.