handling of time stamps in apache-like logfiles

[Joost van Baal]

On Mon, Jun 11, 2001 at 10:41:53AM +0200, Wytze van der Raay wrote:
> The current handling of time stamps in Apache-like logfiles
> (common & combined formats) is strictly limited to the
> dd/Mon/yyyy format (e.g. 11/Jun/2001).
> It would be nice if the alternative format of dd/mm/yyyy
> (e.g. 11/06/2001) would also be recognized; this appears to
> be a quite common variation in the logformat employed by
> some other web servers.

Didn't knew that, thanks for letting us know!

> A fairly minimal change to Time.pm could accomplish this.
> Any objections?

No, except for the fact that currently I'm thinking about how a logfile
format should be defined.  I believe it's nicest if what we currently
call a 'service' would identify a well defined logfile format.  We now
give an extra flag in the apache case:  'www apache common' and 'www
apache combined'.  I'm considering to rename this to 'www apachecommon'
and 'www apachecombined'.  This way, the system is more clean, imho,
and makes it easier to write scripts in a generic-as-possible way.
A 'service' defines a raw logformat, a 'superservice' defines a dlf
format.  BTW, for qmail we allready do handle different timestamp formats.
In that case, it is accomplished by a simple pre-filter.  I guess this
might be the best way to deal with it.

An other way to deal with the different timestamps is creating an extra
flag with the apache scripts, next to <common|combined>.  And yet another
way would be to create two fullblown extra services: apachecommonddmmyyyy
and apachecombinedddmonyyy.

Of course, a change in Time.pm is what deals with it in the end, but the
system as a whole should support it.  I would like to see it implemented
in such a way that one could even set up a responder which deals with
such logfiles.  This would need more changes in the system.

Don't know yet what's the cleanest way to implement it.  Do you?
I'll think about it.

Bye,

Joost



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