FMU/ Mac OS X 10.2 -- web logs

[dburgwin]

It seems that the web log (access.log) that the Web Companion produces records activity for one week and then starts over again. Is this normal activity or have I set up something improperly? Shouldn't it accumulate beyond one week?

Also, is their an easy way to sort out Filemaker served pages so I can find out which records are accessed most often? I am using Sawmill as a web analyzer but it seems to lump all FMPro? calls together.

Thank you,

Darryl Burgwin

Citizenship Studies Media Lab

Calumet College, York University

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

FileMaker Version: 6

Platform: Mac OS X Jaguar

[Steve T.]

Hi, Darryl! Hmm... I have not seen this behavior, but I kinda wanted a log rotation system myself. My Access logs get really huge and I have to manually move them out of the FMP folder... and yes, they can be much longer than 1 week... at least in FMP 4-5.5... I do not have access to FMP6-U.

As for the record tracking, you may be able to use an INLINE ACTION to auto-log the hit or increase the hit count of the record from your detail page.

--ST

[dburgwin]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the advice. I checked again today and again the Access.log is only showing April 22 to April 29. I wish I had your problem of the logs becoming too large.

Any suggestions where I could find out more about FMU and Access.log settings? I have searched FMForums but find no indication of a solution.

As for your suggestion:

"As for the record tracking, you may be able to use an INLINE ACTION to auto-log the hit or increase the hit count of the record from your detail page."

I am not sure what you mean exactly but I will look into INLINE ACTIONs.

[Steve T.]

Howdy, again! An INLINE ACTION is a 2nd action performed after your initial FMP web action. For example, let's say you perform a search using -find for a unique record that goes to "detail.html" as your format page to show the details of that record. You can insert FMP code for an INLINE ACTION somewhere on the details page that will execute a 2nd, independent FMP action (like -find, -new, or whatever) that will resolve before the Web Companion gives the browser the final HTML code. The example given in the CDML Reference Database even has a web log as the example.

You can only have an inline after an initial FMP action, though... it can only follow. Another example might be to have an inline action perform a search on an entirely different database and show the search results for that 2nd search in another table cell on your main detail page. It's really kinda cool. I believe you can even have multiple inline actions all execute and resolve, too.

As for your rotating Access.log files, is it possible that someone else created something to do that automatically outside FileMaker? I can think of a number of ways that could probably work... I just have not gotten around to doing any yet. If your or anyone who has access to the system knows the commandline and UNIX stuff, maybe a CRONTAB was set up to run a script to do this every week.

Or, how is it starting over? Is it re-writing on top of the old log or do you just see dates x to y? Check the size of the file and see if it is staying constant or growing over time... maybe what you're using to view the logs cannot show more than a certain amount due to memory constraints or something. I used to use word processors to view logs but I've had log files so big that they could not be opened with them, so I used text editors such as BBEdit instead, and now that's all I really use. Mac OS X also has a CONSOLE utility that you can use to view logs, too, though. Maybe use something else on the log and see if it shows something different... just thinking outloud, but maybe it's something simple like that... you never know.

--ST

--ST

[dburgwin]

Wow,

Thanks for the detailed description Steve. INLINE ACTIONS look very handy.

I took your advice and looked at the access.log in another reader. I had been just clicking on the log and it would open in Console, which only displayed one week, the most recent, at a time. I opened it in Textedit and all the info was there. Great!

Darryl