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Date: Thu, 02 Oct 2003 10:08:26 -0700
From: "Craig R. McClanahan" <craigmcc@apache.org>
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To: Tomcat Developers List <tomcat-dev@jakarta.apache.org>
Subject: Re: Logging filter (was RE: [next] What's next ?)
References: <20031002161704.17093.qmail@web20421.mail.yahoo.com>
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joe user wrote:

>--- "Shapira, Yoav" <Yoav.Shapira@mpi.com> wrote: 
>  
>
>>1. Convert AccessLogValve to be a servlet
>>specification 2.3 filter, i.e.
>>something portable.  We can define it in
>>$CATALINA_HOME/conf/web.xml,
>>commented out by default perhaps, and users can move
>>the definition
>>around as they need just like they do with the
>>servlets defined
>>conf/web.xml.
>>
>>Furthermore, people can then extend/customize
>>AccessLogFilter much more
>>easily, without needing to touch any tomcat classes.
>> And finally, this
>>will allow the full power of filter-mapping to be
>>applied to access
>>logging. (I imagine the default in conf/web.xml
>>would be the /*
>>url-pattern mapping, but I know I and other users
>>have different use
>>cases).
>>
>>If you think this is useful, I'd like to start
>>working on it myself ;)
>>If you think it's not useful/bad/stupid, please let
>>me know ;)
>>    
>>
>
>That sounds wonderful and useful, but there are a few
>problems here.  Filters don't have access to all the
>information that is needed to make a log entry the way
>the AccessLogValve does it.  Content length, response
>code and content type variables may not be known when
>the filter is processing, and (last time I checked)
>there is no byte[] Response.getContentType() method. 
>There is setContentType() but no getContentType().
>  
>
Easily solved by having the filter add a response wrapper that provides 
access to the needed information.

There's a jakarta-commons sandbox package called "filters" that was 
originally designed to be a home for general purpose Filters like this.  
If you want to experiment with creating Filter implementations of some 
things that are currently Valves in Tomcat, that would be a good place 
to do it.

For access logging in particular, I'd be concerned about a couple of things:

* Filters don't see every request (for example, the authentication
  challenges when you're using BASIC authentication).

* Filters only see the requests for their particular webapp.

* Filters require the webapp to be configured itself to enable them,
  versus the current approach where access logging is a container
  configuration issue.

Craig


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