RailsLogVisualizer: now open source and 6 x faster.

Daniel Wanja — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 21:40:00 +0000

I moved the RailsLogAnalyzer to RubyForge and as there was already a project on RubyForge with the same name, so I renamed it to RailsLogVisualizer. So RailsLogVisualizer it is. Version 0.3 provide a drastic speed improvement over version 0.2. If you are curious or adventurous you can browse the source code on RubyForge.
The Project Home Page is http://railslogvislzr.rubyforge.org/
The project is at http://rubyforge.org/projects/railslogvislzr/
Enjoy!

RailsLogAnalyzer v0.2 for OSX - Faster, Better

Daniel Wanja — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 22:05:00 +0000

Version 0.2 of the RailsLogAnalyzer is still a development version but a great improvement over my first prototype. This version has been rewritten from the ground up and doesn't use a database to store intermediate log file aggreation.

Analyzing your log file data. Once the log file is loaded you will see a breakdown of your requests by year, month, and day. Click on the year, month, or day to see the controllers invocations during that period. Click on the controller in the chart to see the method invocations during the selected period. The method are further broken down based on their http methods (get, post, delete, ...). Note: loading a 10Mb production log file with 30000 requests takes about 10 seconds on my MacBook Pro. loading a 250Mb production log file with 530000 requests takes about 2 minutes. loading a 4.5Gb production log file with 11 million request takes about 45 minutes. The data is loaded in memory and must be reloaded once the application is closed. Download it here RailsLogAnalyzer_0.2.dmg (487KB) and let me know your findings at daniel@onrails.org

RailsLogAnalyzer – help wanted

Daniel Wanja — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 22:37:00 +0000

I need some Mac users to test and give feed back on a very early version of the RailsLogAnalyzer. This app is an OSX app and not deployed on a server, so I would like to find out the obvious bug that may occur on different Macs. I tried it on my own MacBook Pro, G5 server, and on an old PowerBook G4. But then again the people most likely to use it are Rails developers that may have differences in their environment.

So if you like to take risks :-), understand the basic structure of a Rails app, have a production.log you want to analyze, and are not afraid of some scary bugs then read on…

The RailsLogAnalyzer is an OSX application that allows to visualize the production.log of a Rails application. The RailsLogAnalyzer is itself a Rails application, with a Flash user interface, and wrapped as an OSX app using Platypus.

To use the application you ‘just’ need to drop it in your application folder (or where ever you want) and double click it. See the ‘user guide’ here after.

I wrote this small utility to help me see how users where using different Rails applications I was working on by visualizing the production log data. This utility is just doing what I needed and is pretty basic. It’s definitively not ready for prime time, however your input will help drive it’s development.

Requirements:

You need the Flash Player 9. For intel macs the player is in beta and can be downloaded here http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/fp9_beta/install_flash_player_9_ub_beta.dmg. More info here http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/public_beta/. For PowerPC macs, just starting the application will open a browser window that will guide you through the flash player upgrade if you don’t have version 9 installed.
Port 3000 needs to be free. So don’t run any other Rails app when you launch the application.
Don’t click too fast. See the user guide here after for more information.

What the application does

Show graph of unique session and total request per day.
Show pie chart of controller usage (at end of the period observed) .
Show the top ten actions invoked (can be filter by http method and controller)
Show the graphical geoip information ((at end of the period observed). [Very buggy]
Allow time navigation (30 days/7 days increment)

What it doesn’t do so well

Visual feedback when processing. You gotta check the launch window output to see if it’s still busy.
Disable buttons when processing. You can there overload the server if you are not patient.
Report errors. In corner cases you have to open the log file that are inside the application pacakage. Use the ‘Show Package Contents’ on the application then goto to /Contents/Resources/RailsLogAnalyzerPackage/log folder.
Time aggregation. It would be nice to see data aggregated by week/month.
Local File Browsing to upload the log file. Currently you need to enter the full path to the file, there is not UI to select a file.
Log parsing. Certainly can be greatly improved. Haven’t tried to parse development files. Wouldn’t support custom log files either. Doesn’t support well multi processes logging to the same production.log (which is most cases).

Licenses

Well, I still need to put a complete list of what I use and the implications there off. Mostly Rails which is MIT and the GeoLiteCity.dat from maxmind.com/ that is GPL . Note the GeoLiteCity.dat file is 24mb big, thus at least partly the large size of the application. Also I am using the Flex Charting Trial components, that’s visible when the application is running. My trial is running out in 17days as of this writing. I would like to buy the version of Flex Builder with Charting, but Adobe hasn’t answered yet if buying the license for Windows would grant me usage of the version for OSX, when it comes out.

Performances

The application doesn’t provide the best visual feed back yet. It also takes about 1 minute on my MacBook Pro to load a 20Mb production log file and 13 minutes for a 264Mb production log.

Side notes

The database is a sqlite3 and is created in your /Users/daniel/Library/Application\ Support/RailsLogAnalyzer
Note the application must be ‘read-write’. Use ‘Get Info’ on the application and ensure in the ‘Ownership & Permissions’ that the application is ‘Read & Write’. This is due to the fact that rails needs to write to the tmp folder and log folder that are embedded in the application it self.

Please provide feedback to daniel@onrails.org. Thanks in advance, Daniel.

Download RailsLogAnalyzer0.1.dmg (18.6MB)
User Guide

OnRails.org: Tag Analyzer

RailsLogVisualizer: now open source and 6 x faster.

RailsLogAnalyzer v0.2 for OSX - Faster, Better

RailsLogAnalyzer – help wanted