Information
  • Author: Appian Corporation
  • Type: Plug-in (Function & Smart Service)
  • Support: This is an Appian supported plug-in. To the extent that this plug-in does not conform to its documentation, please submit a ticket to Appian Technical Support. Appian does not support customer-created customizations or outdated versions of the plug-in.
  • Industry: All Industries
  • Compatible Version(s): 26.2
  • First Released:
  • Last Updated:
  • Cost: Free - Appian Supported
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Log Reader

Overview

Plug-in Notes:

  • Allows only System Administrators or members of the Designers group to access log data.  
  • Does not load files outside the logs directory or files that do not end in .log.* or .csv.*.
  • On multi-application-server environments, logs will only be shown from a single application server.
  • Custom headers can be specified as an optional parameter. This is meant to be used for .csv files that don't contain a header.

The application requires 20.3. The plugin will work on older versions of Appian

Key Features & Functionality

The Appian Log Reader Plug-in contains functionality to:

  • Read files in the Appian /log folder (.csv or .log) and return them as structured data
  • Aggregate data from a .csv file
  • Serve as the source for a service-backed record for viewing logs
  • The Log Reader application provided with the download demonstrates a service-backed record for viewing logs, as well as reports on specific log files. Administrators can view reports on system health over time, including design best practices, system load, and database performance. The application also contains a process that checks details from system.csv and alerts administrators if memory or CPU utilization exceeds a threshold.
  • Tail a log file with tailcsv and taillog. Note that tail is an expensive operation which is optimized for reading the last few lines of a large log file. It's not advisable to tail the entire log file from the end to the beginning. However, tail will perform much better than the other log functions when reading the last few lines from a very large log file. Use the batch size and timestamp filters to limit the number of lines read by the tailcsv and taillog functions.
  • Takes a line of text in CSV format and returns a text array
Anonymous
  • v2.1.5 Release Notes

    • Fix: Resolved an issue with the readCsv function. It now successfully reads and processes CSV lines even when there is a mismatch between the headers and the actual values.
    • Version 3.0.0 (New Release)
    • Compatibility: Introduced Version 3.0.0 specifically for customers running platform version 26.5 and above.
    • Attachments: The new plugin version and its corresponding Readme file have been attached.
    • Action Required: Customers upgrading to or currently using version 26.5+ can download and begin using this new version from the attachments.

  • Hi team, this plugin is no longer able to read design_errors.csv log in all our environments. All other logs seem to be readed correctly event with design_errors.csv.1 is working, but when we try to read design_errors.csv we obtain only the headers and no rows even if rows are present in the file. This is happening in all our environments, being them on HA or not.

    Is there someone else affected by this issue? Any advice to solve it? Any chance to fix it?

  • v2.1.4 Release Notes
    • Upgraded the date time formatter for avoiding conflicts in multi thread workload balance.

  • Hi everyone,

    We recently upgraded our environment to the latest version (25.4). Since the update, we've noticed that a new column has been added to the login-audit.csv file.

    We have already updated the headers to accommodate this change for both historical and future data. However, we are running into an issue with the files generated on the day of the upgrade. It seems there is a conflict between the data before and after the updrade , resulting in null values.

    Has anyone else encountered this problem?

    Thanks in advance!

    Best regards,

  • Can this plug-in be used in a high available environment to retrieve all instances of one log file?
    We want to retrieve the design_errors.csv log from all 3 of our servers to display in one place. 

  • in reply to pradoshs5135

    Hi, we are using this approach for getting data from specifically the login-audit.csv:

    We are using the Appian Usage Insights Plugin:  Appian Usage Insights
    Advantage is that for High Available environments it collects all audited logins (from all application server nodes) not only the one from the node you are running this on, which is one of the disadvantages mentioned to this plug-in, in the notes:

    • On multi-application-server environments, logs will only be shown from a single application server.

    Disadvantage is that it only captures the successful logins and not any other data than username and login timestamp. So if you need failed attemps and/or source-ip or other data in this csv, this plug-in cannot be used.

    For using the usage insights plugin you do not have to install the entire License Applications mentioned on the app market page, only the plug-in itself in the admin console is enough. 

    We use the results from this Usage Insights plug-in in a daily process to get all logins of the previous day (you will specify a specific audit-startdate and enddate for the timeframe required, which has a limit of max 30 days old). In a process model, which gets the csv as document output from this plug-in's smart-service, we then use Import csv to database plug-in smart service (part of excel tools plug-in: Excel Tools) to load this data in the database and perform logic on that dataset like filtering and use it in interfaces for user insights.

    Maybe this is a workable solution for you as well?



  • Hi, I want to filter rows from login-audit.csv based on the usernames I have. Any idea about that.

  • in reply to Mike Schmitt

    You could try using this tool - it helps present the log data in a much clearer format.

  • I could use an example or better documentation on how to use this plug in. I am looking to query the tomcat-stdOut.log for ERRORS, parse the information, store in a database table, and display in a grid for our developers to monitor. 

  • in reply to Alberto Cortés

    i've been complaining about this issue for years and it's basically gone ignored.  there's no excuse for the output not either returning a dictionary, map, or at least value-escaped CSV (with delimiters), or preferably, JSON string.  Instead we get a mess that's impossible to meaningfully parse.

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