django-easy-audit

Yet another Django audit log app, hopefully the easiest one.

This app allows you to keep track of every action taken by your users.

Quickstart

1. Install Django Easy Audit by running pip install django-easy-audit.

   Alternatively, you can download the latest release from GitHub, unzip it, and place the folder 'easyaudit' in the root of your project.

2. Add 'easyaudit' to your INSTALLED_APPS like this:

   INSTALLED_APPS = [
       ...
       'easyaudit',
   ]

3. Add Easy Audit's middleware to your MIDDLEWARE (or MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES) setting like this:

   MIDDLEWARE = (
       ...
       'easyaudit.middleware.easyaudit.EasyAuditMiddleware',
   )

4. Run python manage.py migrate easyaudit to create the app's models.

5. That's it! Now every CRUD event on your whole project will be registered in the audit models, which you will be able to query from the Django admin app. Additionally, this app will also log all authentication events and all URLs requested.

Settings

For an exhaustive list of available settings, please check our wiki.

Below are some of the settings you may want to use. These should be defined in your project's settings.py file:

• DJANGO_EASY_AUDIT_WATCH_MODEL_EVENTS

• DJANGO_EASY_AUDIT_WATCH_AUTH_EVENTS

• DJANGO_EASY_AUDIT_WATCH_REQUEST_EVENTS

  Set these to False to stop logging model, authentication, and/or request events.

• DJANGO_EASY_AUDIT_UNREGISTERED_CLASSES_EXTRA

  A list of Django models which will be ignored by Django Easy Audit. Use it to prevent logging one or more of your project's models. List items can be classes or strings with app_name.model_name format.

• DJANGO_EASY_AUDIT_UNREGISTERED_URLS_EXTRA

  A list of URLs which will be ignored by Django Easy Audit. List items are expected to be regular expressions that will be matched against the URL path. Check our wiki for more details on how to use it.

• DJANGO_EASY_AUDIT_CRUD_DIFFERENCE_CALLBACKS

  May point to a list of callables/string-paths-to-functions-classes in which the application code can determine on a per CRUDEvent whether or not the application chooses to create the CRUDEvent or not. This is different from the registered/unregistered settings (e.g. DJANGO_EASY_AUDIT_UNREGISTERED_CLASSES_EXTRA). This is meant to be for dynamic configurations where the application may inspect the current save/create/delete and choose whether or not to save that into the database or ignore it.

• DJANGO_EASY_AUDIT_USER_DB_CONSTRAINT

  Default is True. This is reserved for future use (does not do anything yet). The functionality provided by the setting (whether enabled or disabled) could be handled more explicitly in certain code paths (or even internally as custom model managers). For projects that separate the easyaudit database, such that the tables are not on the same database as the user table, this could help with making certain queries easier. Again, this doesn't do anything yet, and if it ever does, the version will be increased and the README will be updated accordingly. If you keep your database together (the standard usage), you have nothing to worry about.

• DJANGO_EASY_AUDIT_CRUD_EVENT_LIST_FILTER

• DJANGO_EASY_AUDIT_LOGIN_EVENT_LIST_FILTER

• DJANGO_EASY_AUDIT_REQUEST_EVENT_LIST_FILTER

  Changeview filters configuration. Used to remove filters when the corresponding list of data would be too long. Defaults are:

  • ['event_type', 'content_type', 'user', 'datetime', ] for CRUDEventAdmin
  • ['login_type', 'user', 'datetime', ] for LoginEventAdmin
  • ['method', 'user', 'datetime', ] for RequestEventAdmin

• DJANGO_EASY_AUDIT_DATABASE_ALIAS

  By default it is the Django default database alias. But for projects that have split databases, this is necessary in order to keep database atomicity concerns in check during signal handlers.

  To clarify, this is only truly necessary for the model signals.

• DJANGO_EASY_AUDIT_PROPAGATE_EXCEPTIONS

  Default is False. When set to True, easyaudit will propagate exceptions occurred in own signal handlers. The recommended approach is to use Django's DEBUG setting in order to only propagate errors in development:

  DJANGO_EASY_AUDIT_PROPAGATE_EXCEPTIONS = DEBUG

• DJANGO_EASY_AUDIT_CRUD_EVENT_NO_CHANGED_FIELDS_SKIP

  By default this is False, but this allows the calling project not to save CRUDEvent if the changed fields as determined by the pre_save handler sees that there are no changed fields. We are keeping it off by default so that projects that wish to use this (potentially less CRUDEvent) can choose to turn it on! And those that do not want it (yet or ever), or those that do not closely follow the release notes of this project will have one less worry when upgrading.

• DJANGO_EASY_AUDIT_CHECK_IF_REQUEST_USER_EXISTS

  By default this is True, but this allows the calling project to make easyaudit ignore user validation on audit event creation. This is useful when you have a app with soft delete or no delete on users model. With this set to False, easyaudit only fetch request.user for audit event creation, no db check is made, meaning you can speed up audit events creation and save some DB calls.

• DJANGO_EASY_AUDIT_READONLY_EVENTS

  Default is False. The events visible through the admin interface are editable by default by a superuser. Set this to True if you wish to make the recorded events read-only through the admin UI.

• DJANGO_EASY_AUDIT_LOGGING_BACKEND

  A pluggable backend option for logging. Defaults to easyaudit.backends.ModelBackend. This class expects to have 3 methods:

  • login(self, login_info_dict):
  • crud(self, crud_info_dict):
  • request(self, request_info_dict):

  each of these methods accept a dictionary containing the info regarding the event. example overriding:

    import logging
  
    class PythonLoggerBackend:
        logging.basicConfig()
        logger = logging.getLogger('your-kibana-logger')
        logger.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
  
        def request(self, request_info):
            return request_info # if you don't need it
  
        def login(self, login_info):
            self.logger.info(msg='your message', extra=login_info)
            return login_info
  
        def crud(self, crud_info):
            self.logger.info(msg='your message', extra=crud_info)
            return crud_info

What does it do

Django Easy Audit uses Django signals to listen to the events happening in your project, such as when a user creates, updates or deletes a registry. This applies to every model of every app in your project.

When any of these events takes place, Django Easy Audit will log it in the model CRUDEvent. You can query this information in the Django Admin app.

Besides logging CRUD events, Django Easy Audit will log all authentication events (such as when a user logs in, out, or fails to log in) and all the URLs requested in the project. This information is stored in models LoginEvent and RequestEvent.

Why you should use it

There are many Django auditing apps out there, but most them require you to change very important parts of your project's code. For example, they require you to add fields to your models, or make them inherit from a certain class. Some of them create a mirror for each of your models, which means duplicate migrations.

It is not that they don't work or that they are not great apps. But in case you need something easier to set up, and you don't want your code to depend so much on a third-party app, Django Easy Audit may be your best choice.

The good thing about this app is that it doesn't get in the way. It is easy and quick to install, and it begins logging everything right away, without you having to inject code anywhere in your project.

Contact

Find me on Twitter at @soynatan, or send me an email to natancalzolari@gmail.com.