Dynamically Enable Access Log to Track Service Calls

The access log can effectively record all service request information processed by a machine over a period of time, including request reception time, remote IP, request parameters, response results, etc. Dynamically enabling the access log at runtime is very helpful for problem troubleshooting.

Before You Start

• Deploy the Shop Mall Project
• Deploy and open Dubbo Admin

Task Details

All user services of the mall are provided by the UserService of the User application. Through this task, we enable the access log for one or more machines of the User application to observe the overall access situation of user services.

Dynamically Enable Access Log

Dubbo identifies the access log status through the accesslog tag. We can specify the output location of the log file, and we can also enable the access log for a specific machine.

Operation Steps

1. Open the Dubbo Admin console
2. In the left navigation bar, select 【Service Governance】>【Dynamic Configuration】
3. Click “Create”, enter the application name shop-user, and check “Enable Access Log” (at this time, the access log will be printed together with the normal log).

After visiting the login page again and logging into any machine of the User application, you can see the access log in the following format.

[2022-12-30 12:36:31.15900] -> [2022-12-30 12:36:31.16000] 192.168.0.103:60943 -> 192.168.0.103:20884 - org.apache.dubbo.samples.UserService login(java.lang.String,java.lang.String) ["test",""], dubbo version: 3.2.0-beta.4-SNAPSHOT, current host: 192.168.0.103
[2022-12-30 12:36:33.95900] -> [2022-12-30 12:36:33.95900] 192.168.0.103:60943 -> 192.168.0.103:20884 - org.apache.dubbo.samples.UserService getInfo(java.lang.String) ["test"], dubbo version: 3.2.0-beta.4-SNAPSHOT, current host: 192.168.0.103
[2022-12-30 12:36:31.93500] -> [2022-12-30 12:36:34.93600] 192.168.0.103:60943 -> 192.168.0.103:20884 - org.apache.dubbo.samples.UserService getInfo(java.lang.String) ["test"], dubbo version: 3.2.0-beta.4-SNAPSHOT, current host: 192.168.0.103

Rule Details

Rule Key: shop-user

Rule Body

configVersion: v3.0
enabled: true
configs:
  - side: provider
    parameters:
      accesslog: true

The key configuration to enable access logs is as follows:

parameters:
  accesslog: true

The effective values of accesslog are as follows:

• When true or default, the access log will be output together with the business logger. You can configure the dubbo.accesslog appender in advance to adjust the output location and format of the logs.
• A specific file path like /home/admin/demo/dubbo-access.log will print the access log to the specified file.

In the Admin interface, you can also specify whether to enable the access log for a specific machine for precise problem troubleshooting, with the corresponding backend rule as follows:

configVersion: v3.0
enabled: true
configs:
  - match
     address:
       oneof:
        - wildcard: "{ip}:*"
    side: provider
    parameters:
      accesslog: true

Here, replace {ip} with the specific machine address.