Common Log Format
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The Common Log Format is a standardised text file format used by web servers when generating log files. Because the format is standardised, the files may be analysed by a variety of analysis programs.
Each line in a file stored in the Common Log Format has the following syntax:
host ident authuser date request status bytes
Example
127.0.0.1 - frank [10/Oct/2000:13:55:36 -0700] "GET /apache_pb.gif HTTP/1.0" 200 2326
A "-" in a field indicates missing data.
- 127.0.0.1 is the IP address of the client (remote host) which made the request to the server.
- - RFC 1413 identity of the client.
- frank is the userid of the person requesting the document.
- [10/Oct/2000:13:55:36 -0700] is the date, time, and time zone when the server finished processing the request.
- "GET /apache_pb.gif HTTP/1.0" is the request line from the client. The method GET, /apache_pb.gif the resource requested, and HTTP/1.0 the HTTP protocol.
- 200 is the HTTP status code returned to the client. 2xx is a successful response, 3xx a redirection, 4xx a client error, and 5xx a server error.
- 2326 is the size of the object returned to the client, measured in bytes.
See also
- Extended Log Format
- Log management and intelligence
- Web log analysis software
- Web counter
- Data logging
- Syslog
References
- Common Logfile Format as described in the documentation of the World Wide Web consortia webserver (W3C httpd).
- Common Logfile Format as described in the documentation of the Apache webserver (2.2)