Overview

The goal of this appjar is to capture, persist, and expose application log events at runtime, giving administrators fine-grained control over what is stored and how it is presented.

Centralised logging is a critical capability in enterprise applications. While standard logging frameworks write messages to files or external aggregators, these outputs are not always accessible to administrators working within the application itself. The Activity Log appjar bridges this gap by intercepting log events that match configured criteria and persisting them to the database, where they can be queried, filtered, and reviewed directly from the administration interface.

Extractors

An Extractor defines the rules that determine which log entries are captured and stored. Each Extractor specifies matching criteria across four dimensions: time windows (specific dates or recurring days of the week), severity levels (TRACE through FATAL), logger name patterns, and log message content patterns. Only log events that match at least one active Extractor are persisted. This selective approach prevents irrelevant noise from accumulating in the database.

Removers

A Remover defines the conditions under which stored log entries are automatically deleted once they reach a specified age. Removers target entries using the same criteria as Extractors — time windows, severity levels, logger patterns, and message content — and apply an expiration window that determines how long matching entries are retained. Removers prevent the log database from growing indefinitely and allow different retention policies for different categories of log data.

Log Viewers

A Log Viewer is a dynamically registered page that exposes a curated subset of the log data to end users. Each Log Viewer is configured with pre-set filters, column visibility options, and a dedicated URL path. Administrators create Log Viewers to give specific user groups visibility into relevant log activity without exposing the full administration interface. Users accessing a Log Viewer see only the columns and filter controls that the administrator has enabled.