1 - Main features

Introduction

Here is the main window of Pimp My Log :

We are going to take a tour of all features in the menu bar from left to right.

Logo

Click on it and the page will be fully reloaded. The configuration file will be reloaded. Hey what a feature!

Refresh

Click on the refresh button to check for new logs for the selected file.

You can manually refresh logs :

Switch between log files

You can display as many files as you want in the same Pimp My Log instance.

Simply choose the one you want to view.

You can set the default loaded file in the configuration file by setting its file object as the first one in the dictionary files.

Search

The search input lets you type some words to search in the log file. Stroke key F to focus on the search input.

The search is done line by line in every full line. The search is not performed on each separated token from a line.

Warning

The search is done in a full line of logs. Take this log:

127.0.0.1 - - [21/Dec/2013:22:19:29 +0100] "GET /img/psk.png HTTP/1.1"

The line above will be returned if you search for text +0100] "GET /img/ for example

Text search

Simply type something and the text will be searched and displayed.

RegEx search

If the search is a valid regular expression, it will be searched with the PHP preg_match version. The documentation about patterns is here.

When a RegEx is valid, the search input box becomes pink.

The great thing in PCRE functions is that a RegEx delimiter can be any non-alphanumeric, non-backslash, non-whitespace character.

To get all images from the root /img/ directory for example, you can use these RegEx:

I put a space before the first slash because I don't forget that the RegEx is applied on full lines of logs and a line is something like this 127.0.0.1 - - [21/Dec/2013:22:19:29 +0100] "GET /img/psk.png HTTP/1.1" so to match the /img directory at root, I know there is a space before. I could write this too:

Search timer

The search is done from the bottom to the top of log file and Pimp My Log collects matched lines until the number of lines you want to display is reached. The problem is that if you try to find something rare, Pimp My Log will scan the full log file and I am quite sure you have tons of megabytes!

So there is a limitation timer and when Pimp My Log has reach this timer, it returns what it has found. 2 consequences :

You can modify the default timer as explained here.

You can see in the footer 2 interesting things :

If these values are too high and you cannot display what you want to find, change your search expression...

Auto-refresh

You can ask Pimp My Log to refresh the display automatically. It is really useful with desktop notification. You can leave Pimp My Log in a hidden tab in a window back to all others and you will receive desktop notification when a new log is available. Just click on the desktop notification and Pimp My Log will come on top!

I use these settings when I develop a website:

Note

Don't be afraid to use the 1 second auto-refresh even on production servers. Pimp My Log only performs incremental log scans (except for the first launch).

Displayed lines

You can change the number of lines you want to display. Just select in the list the number or log lines you want. Displaying a lot of lines has performance consequences on: - first load - search

On normal usage, Pimp My Log only check for new logs in the log file.

Desktop notifications

The desktop notification icon is displayed when your browser supports this feature. If browser does not support desktop notification, the notification icon is not displayed.

The notification icon on top right is:

Footer

You can see something like this :

13 logs displayed, 2 new logs found in 11ms with 947B of logs, 1 skipped line(s), 0 unreadable line(s).

File /opt/local/apache2/logs/access_log was last modified on 2014/01/09 23:12:39, size is 7M

What does it mean?

Log rotation

Don't be afraid to see a these messages in top of the window:

2 - Advanced features

As a user, each time you change a parameter in the Pimp My Log interface, the URL is refreshed in your browser.

You can save the current view by bookmarking Pimp My Log.

If you click on the Pimp My Log logo at top left, all default settings from the config.user.json will be used.

Here is the list of supported GET parameters.

Default file (i)

The first file defined in your configuration file is displayed by default.

You can change this behaviour by adding a GET parameter in the Pimp My Log url. The GET parameter name is i and its value is the fileid of the log file as defined in the configuration file.

eg: http://.../PimpMyLog/?i=apache2

Language selector (l)

Users can override the default by setting a GET parameter named l.

http://.../PimpMyLog/?l=fr_FR will load Pimp My Log in French for example.

Supported languages are :

Maximum count of logs (m)

Users can override the maximum count of logs by setting a GET parameter named m.

http://.../PimpMyLog/?w=100 will display a maximum count of 100 logs.

Supported values are pre-defined values ( configuration file value, 5, 10, 20, 50, ...)

Notification (n)

Users can override the default notification preference by setting a GET parameter named n.

http://.../PimpMyLog/?n=false will disable the notification.

Supported views are :

Refresh timer (r)

Users can override the auto-refresh value by setting a GET parameter named r.

http://.../PimpMyLog/?r=1 will refresh every second.

Supported values are pre-defined values ( configuration file value, 1, 2, 5, ...)

Search (s)

Users can launch a search by default by setting a GET parameter named s.

http://.../PimpMyLog/?s=what+am+I+searching+for+%3F

Timezone selector (tz)

You can easily change all time values according to your current timezone. By default, all time values are displayed as they are stored in log files, assuming they correspond to the server timezone. The server timezone is normally set in your php.ini file.

If you are currently in an other timezone location and want to display logs according to your current timezone, you can specify your timezone in the GET parameter like this:

http://.../PimpMyLog/?tz=America/Los_Angeles

Or:

http://.../PimpMyLog/?tz=UTC

All available timezone strings are available here.

Wide view (w)

Users can override the default view by setting a GET parameter named w.

http://.../PimpMyLog/?w=false will disable the wide view for example.

Supported views are :