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Apache access log parser

A simple application that allows you to write custom plugins to exctract the statistical data from the Apache web server access logs.

The application was initially developed as an example for one of the "Pro Python System Administration" book chapters.

You can find more information about the application on the project website.

Application structure

Application is split into three parts:

  • The main application script (http_log_parser.py), which reads in the log lines and calls the plug-in framework
  • The plug-in manager framework (manager.py), which handles the module loading and data passing functions
  • The plug in modules (plugins/plugin_*.py). These modules implement the data gathering and processing functions.

Changing the log format

By default the application recognises the "combined" access log line format, which is defined in the Apache configuration as:

LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" combined

You can change the format structure by specifying it in the LogLineGenerator constructor call. For example, if you are using a "Common Log Format" change the following code:

def main():
    ...
    log_generator = LogLineGenerator()
    ...

to:

def main():
    ...
    log_generator = LogLineGenerator(log_format='%h %l %u %t %r %>s %b')
    ...

Developing the plug-in modules

All plug-in modules mus be placed in the plugins/ directory. The filename must be of the following format: plugin_<plugin_name>.py. The basic plug-in module skeleton is:

#!/usr/bin/env python

from manager import Plugin

class GeoIPStats(Plugin):

    def __init__(self, **kwargs):
        # plugin initialisation function
        ...

    def process(self, **kwargs):
        # this will be called for every line retrieved from the log file
        # the fields can be accessed as 'kwargs['remote_host']
        # the full listing of all available dictionary keys and their
        # mapping to the Apache log directives is defined in the
        # main application file
        ...

    def report(self, **kwargs):
        # this will be called when there are no more log entries left
        # this is the opportunity for the plug-in to calculate and
        # print some reports
        ...

Usage

Running the main application will automaticaly load all the available plug-in modules from the plugins directory. All files in the logs directory are considered to be the Apache web server log files.

$ ./http_log_parser.py 
== Requests by country ==
        382: United States
        258: Sweden
        103: France
         42: China
         31: Russian Federation
          9: India
          8: Italy
          7: United Kingdom
          7: Anonymous Proxy
          6: Philippines
          6: Switzerland
          2: Tunisia
          2: Japan
          1: Croatia
== HTTP code 200 counter ==
HTTP 200 responses: 349
All responses: 864