Better Logging?

[csgaraglino]

I am responsible for several CF 9 Servers for a large group of developers and I have been more and more frustrated by the LACK of information in the application.log file.

Specifically - the lack of user_agent in the log.

I know that I can set a server side error file - but frankly - I just don't have the time to rebuild the proverbial wheel and recreate a whole new application just to trap errors.

The existing log system almost has all I need to initiate a development support ticket - but getting flooded with Bots and PCI Compliance testing is resulting in a lot of wasted time searching for real errors.

Are there any downloadable or purchasable code out there that already does the trapping efficiently and effectively?

[Charlie Arehart]

@csgaraglino: good news for you. Yes, there is already code out there that can help you do better error trapping. See any of the following tools (a category of my CF411.com site, with over 1800 resources for CFers):

Error Handling Tools

http://www.cf411.com/error

These are frameworks (some written in CF, some not) that you can essentially “drop in” and they do all kinds of things about error handling much better than most people would think to do themselves.

That said, as you may know, one can access the user agent for a request in the cgi.http_user_agent variable. So if you’re doing any error handling at all (your own or one of those apps above), you can access the info there.

Then again, do note something important (which you may also already know): if you do any error handling at all, you will NOT see any info in the application.log about that error. The error handling overrides CF’s default behavior to write the error to that log. So one would have to intentionally do a CFLOG to write the error to the log if one were relying on the log (in addition to the error handling) for any reason.

Hope that helps.

/charlie