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Logging Page Activity

By Will Bontrager

The information in this post has been addressed to various degrees with various focus on various pages of our web sites.

Here, I focus tightly on one thing, logging page activity with JavaScript. The JavaScript sends information to a CGI Perl or PHP script. The information is then logged.

The JavaScript sends the information to the server-side script with a call for an image.

This example sends the document's referrer to a logging script named Log.cgi:

The Log.cgi Perl script is in the textarea box below.

Note that a condition of using the software is your agreement to the License Agreement. Also, there is one customization point — where the log file is specified. If the log file is to be in the same directory as the Log.cgi script, only the file name needs to be specified. Otherwise, specify the directory location with the name.

#!/usr/bin/perl
# Software to log query information and return 
#    an image to the browser.
# Version 1.0
# October 30, 2006
# Will Bontrager
# http://BontragerConnection.com/
# Copyright 2006 Bontrager Connection, LLC
# Agree to License Agreement at
#    http://www.willmaster.com/master/LicenseAgreement.html
#    before using this software.
#######################################

use strict;

# Specify log file between the quotation marks:

my $LogFileName = "mylogfile.log";

# No other customizations required.

sub ConstructDate
{
	my @mon = qw(Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec);
	my ($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst) = localtime;
	$year += 1900;
	return "$mday $mon[$mon] $year";
} # sub ConstructDate

sub LogTheInformation
{
	open W,">$LogFileName" unless open W,">>$LogFileName";
	print W join("\t",@_) . "\n";
	close W;
} # sub LogTheInformation

sub SendImageToBrowser
{
	# Based on module Base64.pm,v 2.16 2001/02/24 06:28:10 gisle
	local($^W) = 0;
	my $image = "R0lGODlhBQAFAJH/AP///wAAAMDAwAAAACH5BAEAAAIALAAAAAAFAAUAAAIElI+pWAA7\n";
	$image =~ tr|A-Za-z0-9+=/||cd;
	$image =~ s/=+$//;
	$image =~ tr|A-Za-z0-9+/| -_|;
	print "Content-type: image/gif\n\n";
	binmode STDOUT;
	print join '',map(unpack("u",chr(32 + length($_)*3/4) . $_),$image =~ /(.{1,60})/gs);
} # sub SendImageToBrowser

my $Date = ConstructDate;
my $LoggingInfo = $ENV{QUERY_STRING};
$LoggingInfo =~ s/%([a-fA-F0-9][a-fA-F0-9])/pack("C",hex($1))/eg;
LogTheInformation $Date,$ENV{REMOTE_ADDR},$LoggingInfo;
SendImageToBrowser;
# end of file

A PHP script has not been made for this post. When I wrote this, I was pressed for time.

If you'll be kind enough to rate this post a 4 or 5, and if many people do so, I'll make the time to write a PHP logging script and append it.

October 30, 2006

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WillMaster > Blog > Automation

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Logging Page Activity

WillMaster > Blog > Automation

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Logging Page Activity

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