Appendix C Using the Custom Log File Format

This chapter contains information about the log format used by Web Server. Use these format options to customize the format of your log files. You can enter them through the Admin Console, or edit the format subelement of the access-log element in server.xml. For more information, see access-log.

You can use variables and expressions in log formats with the syntax $variable and $(expression). For more information, see Variables, and Expressions.

Custom Log File Format

When creating a custom log format, anything contained between percent signs (%) is recognized as the name portion of a name-value pair stored in a parameter block in the server. Any additional text is treated as literal text, so you can add to the line to make it more readable. The one exception to the percent sign rule is the %SYSDATE% component, which delivers the current system date. %SYSDATE% is formatted using the time format %d/%b/%Y:%H:%M:%S plus the offset from GMT.

If no format parameter is specified for a log file, the common log format is used:

"%Ses->client.ip% - %Req->vars.auth-user% [%SYSDATE%]
\"%Req->reqpb.clf-request%\" %Req->srvhdrs.clf-status%
%Req->srvhdrs.content-length%"

Typical components of log file format are listed in the following table. Because certain components could resolve to values that contain spaces, they are enclosed in escaped quotes (\").

Table C–1 Typical Components of Custom Log Formatting

Option	Component
Client host name (unless iponly is specified in flex-log or DNS name is not available) or IP address	%Ses->client.ip%
Client DNS name	%Ses->client.dns%
System date	%SYSDATE%
Full HTTP request line	\"%Req->reqpb.clf-request%\"
Status	%Req->srvhdrs.clf-status%
Response content length	%Req->srvhdrs.content-length%
Response content type	%Req->srvhdrs.content-type%
Referer header	\"%Req->headers.referer%\"
User-Agent header	\"%Req->headers.user-agent%\"
HTTP method	%Req->reqpb.method%
HTTP URI	%Req->reqpb.uri%
HTTP query string	%Req->reqpb.query%
HTTP protocol version	%Req->reqpb.protocol%
Accept header	%Req->headers.accept%
Date header	%Req->headers.date%
If-Modified-Since header	%Req->headers.if-modified-since%
Authorization header	%Req->headers.authorization%
Any header value	%Req->headers.headername%
Name of authorized user	%Req->vars.auth-user%
Value of a cookie	%Req->headers.cookie.name%
Value of any variable in Req->vars	%Req->vars.varname%
Virtual server ID	%vsid%
Duration	%duration% Records the time in microseconds the server spent handling the request. Statistics must be enabled before %duration% can be used.