django-auditlog documentation¶
django-auditlog (Auditlog) is a reusable app for Django that makes logging object changes a breeze. Auditlog tries to use as much as Python and Django’s built in functionality to keep the list of dependencies as short as possible. Also, Auditlog aims to be fast and simple to use.
Auditlog is created out of the need for a simple Django app that logs changes to models along with the user who made the changes (later referred to as actor). Existing solutions seemed to offer a type of version control, which was found excessive and expensive in terms of database storage and performance.
The core idea of Auditlog is similar to the log from Django’s admin. However, Auditlog is much more flexible than the
log from Django’s admin app (django.contrib.admin
). Also, Auditlog saves a summary of the changes in JSON
format, so changes can be tracked easily.
Contents¶
Installation¶
Installing Auditlog is simple and straightforward. First of all, you need a copy of Auditlog on your system. The easiest way to do this is by using the Python Package Index (PyPI). Simply run the following command:
pip install django-auditlog
Instead of installing Auditlog via PyPI, you can also clone the Git repository or download the source code via GitHub. The repository can be found at https://github.com/jjkester/django-auditlog/.
Requirements
- Python 2.7, 3.4 or higher
- Django 1.8 or higher
Auditlog is currently tested with Python 2.7 and 3.4 and Django 1.8, 1.9 and 1.10. The latest test report can be found at https://travis-ci.org/jjkester/django-auditlog.
Adding Auditlog to your Django application¶
To use Auditlog in your application, just add 'auditlog'
to your project’s INSTALLED_APPS
setting and run
manage.py migrate
to create/upgrade the necessary database structure.
If you want Auditlog to automatically set the actor for log entries you also need to enable the middleware by adding
'auditlog.middleware.AuditlogMiddleware'
to your MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES
setting. Please check Usage for more
information.
Usage¶
Manually logging changes¶
Auditlog log entries are simple LogEntry
model instances. This makes creating a new log entry very easy. For
even more convenience, LogEntryManager
provides a number of methods which take some work out of your hands.
See Internals for all details.
Automatically logging changes¶
Auditlog can automatically log changes to objects for you. This functionality is based on Django’s signals, but linking your models to Auditlog is even easier than using signals.
Registering your model for logging can be done with a single line of code, as the following example illustrates:
from auditlog.registry import auditlog
from django.db import models
class MyModel(models.Model):
pass
# Model definition goes here
auditlog.register(MyModel)
It is recommended to place the register code (auditlog.register(MyModel)
) at the bottom of your models.py
file.
This ensures that every time your model is imported it will also be registered to log changes. Auditlog makes sure that
each model is only registered once, otherwise duplicate log entries would occur.
Excluding fields
Fields that are excluded will not trigger saving a new log entry and will not show up in the recorded changes.
To exclude specific fields from the log you can pass include_fields
resp. exclude_fields
to the register
method. If exclude_fields
is specified the fields with the given names will not be included in the generated log
entries. If include_fields
is specified only the fields with the given names will be included in the generated log
entries. Explicitly excluding fields through exclude_fields
takes precedence over specifying which fields to
include.
For example, to exclude the field last_updated
, use:
auditlog.register(MyModel, exclude_fields=['last_updated'])
New in version 0.3.0: Excluding fields
Actors¶
When using automatic logging, the actor is empty by default. However, auditlog can set the actor from the current request automatically. This does not need any custom code, adding a middleware class is enough. When an actor is logged the remote address of that actor will be logged as well.
To enable the automatic logging of the actors, simply add the following to your MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES
setting in your
project’s configuration file:
MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = (
# Request altering middleware, e.g., Django's default middleware classes
'auditlog.middleware.AuditlogMiddleware',
# Other middleware
)
It is recommended to keep all middleware that alters the request loaded before Auditlog’s middleware.
Warning
Please keep in mind that every object change in a request that gets logged automatically will have the current request’s user as actor. To only have some object changes to be logged with the current request’s user as actor manual logging is required.
Object history¶
Auditlog ships with a custom field that enables you to easily get the log entries that are relevant to your object. This
functionality is built on Django’s content types framework (django.contrib.contenttypes
). Using this field in
your models is equally easy as any other field:
from auditlog.models import AuditlogHistoryField
from auditlog.registry import auditlog
from django.db import models
class MyModel(models.Model):
history = AuditlogHistoryField()
# Model definition goes here
auditlog.register(MyModel)
AuditlogHistoryField
accepts an optional pk_indexable
parameter, which is either True
or
False
, this defaults to True
. If your model has a custom primary key that is not an integer value,
pk_indexable
needs to be set to False
. Keep in mind that this might slow down queries.
Many-to-many relationships¶
New in version 0.3.0.
Warning
To-many relations are not officially supported. However, this section shows a workaround which can be used for now. In the future, this workaround may be used in an official API or a completly different strategy might be chosen. Do not rely on the workaround here to be stable across releases.
By default, many-to-many relationships are not tracked by Auditlog.
The history for a many-to-many relationship without an explicit ‘through’ model can be recorded by registering this model as follows:
auditlog.register(MyModel.related.through)
The log entries for all instances of the ‘through’ model that are related to a MyModel
instance can be retrieved
with the LogEntryManager.get_for_objects()
method. The resulting QuerySet can be combined with any other
queryset of LogEntry
instances. This way it is possible to get a list of all changes on an object and its
related objects:
obj = MyModel.objects.first()
rel_history = LogEntry.objects.get_for_objects(obj.related.all())
full_history = (obj.history.all() | rel_history.all()).order_by('-timestamp')
Management commands¶
New in version 0.4.0.
Auditlog provides the auditlogflush
management command to clear all log entries from the database.
The command asks for confirmation, it is not possible to execute the command without giving any form of (simulated) user input.
Warning
Using the auditlogflush
command deletes all log entries permanently and irreversibly from the database.
Django Admin integration¶
New in version 0.4.1.
When auditlog
is added to your INSTALLED_APPS
setting a customized admin class is active providing an enhanced
Django Admin interface for log entries.
Internals¶
You might be interested in the way things work on the inside of Auditlog. This section covers the internal APIs of Auditlog which is very useful when you are looking for more advanced ways to use the application or if you like to contribute to the project.
The documentation below is automatically generated from the source code.
Models and fields¶
Middleware¶
Signal receivers¶
Calculating changes¶
-
auditlog.diff.
get_field_value
(obj, field)[source]¶ Gets the value of a given model instance field. :param obj: The model instance. :type obj: Model :param field: The field you want to find the value of. :type field: Any :return: The value of the field as a string. :rtype: str
-
auditlog.diff.
get_fields_in_model
(instance)[source]¶ Returns the list of fields in the given model instance. Checks whether to use the official _meta API or use the raw data. This method excludes many to many fields.
Parameters: instance (Model) – The model instance to get the fields for Returns: The list of fields for the given model (instance) Return type: list
-
auditlog.diff.
model_instance_diff
(old, new)[source]¶ Calculates the differences between two model instances. One of the instances may be
None
(i.e., a newly created model or deleted model). This will cause all fields with a value to have changed (fromNone
).Parameters: - old (Model) – The old state of the model instance.
- new (Model) – The new state of the model instance.
Returns: A dictionary with the names of the changed fields as keys and a two tuple of the old and new field values as value.
Return type: dict
-
auditlog.diff.
track_field
(field)[source]¶ Returns whether the given field should be tracked by Auditlog.
Untracked fields are many-to-many relations and relations to the Auditlog LogEntry model.
Parameters: field (Field) – The field to check. Returns: Whether the given field should be tracked. Return type: bool
Registry¶
Contribute to Auditlog¶
Note
Due to multiple reasons the development of Auditlog is not a priority for me at this moment. Therefore progress might be slow. This does not mean that this project is abandoned! Community involvement in the form of pull requests is very much appreciated. Also, if you like to take Auditlog to the next level and be a permanent contributor, please contact the author. Contact information can be found via GitHub.
If you discovered a bug or want to improve the code, please submit an issue and/or pull request via GitHub. Before submitting a new issue, please make sure there is no issue submitted that involves the same problem.
\ Sort by:\ best rated\ newest\ oldest\
\\
Add a comment\ (markup):
\``code``
, \ code blocks:::
and an indented block after blank line