Using Logging
From BitWise DocuWiki
BitWise offers powerful logging options for not only conversations and conferences but also URLs and events. This document introduces the BitWise logging features and the BitWise Log Viewer. The URL History is also shown and discussed briefly at the bottom.
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General logging preferences
First, open the preferences. The preferences are accessible under the File menu of the contact list, and from a few other places as well. In the list of preferences on the left, click on Logging, and then expand Logging by click the plus or arrow next to it.
On this page, you can specify a location for your logs, as well as which types of logs you want to create.
- Conversations: Automatically log normal one-on-one chats in realtime. You can specify a variety of file formats on the Formats page (see Logging Formats).
- Conferences: Automatically log conferences. The files are named the same as the conference name.
- URL History: Stores all URLs received or sent in the URL history for easy searching and viewing. See The URL History Window below.
- Events: BitWise events include status changes, direct connections, and server connections. Events are always logged during each session in the Event Log, but are only saved to disk if this option is selected.
Advanced logging preferences
The advanced logging options give you detailed control over how your logs are saved and presented.
- Timestamps:
- Conversations: You may want to use more detailed timestamps when saving your logs than when having the conversation (for example, you may want to include the date in your saved logs but not show them during conversations).
- Log Viewer (XML): When viewing XML logs in the log viewer, you have the option to reformat the timestamp in any format.
- Sent URLs: If enabled, URLs sent by you to others will also be entered into the URL History.
- XML Colors: XML logs retain individual message properties, and can be redisplayed using your regular conversation coloring. This makes the logs easier to read but also makes them take longer to load, so be cautious with this setting on slower computers.
- Log Display Colors: Choose the colors that will be used when viewing and searching your logs in the log viewer.
Logging formats
BitWise allows you to log your conversations in many formats depending on your needs. Shown here are the default settings. The formats are divided into two parts, which combined make 8 different logging formats. By default, the user-text and user/daily-XML formats are enabled.
- User: Place conversations with each user in their own file.
- Daily: Place conversations each day in their own file.
- User / Daily: Creates a folder for each user and places each day's conversation in a separate file.
- Monolithic: Puts all conversatios with all users over all time into one file. This format results in very large logs which can be hard to search. Monolithic logs cannot be displayed in the log viewer.
- Plaintext: Regular text format.
- XML: Each message is stored as XML to retain specific message information separately (from, to, time, etc) so it can be redisplayed differently later, or can be processed by another application.
Open the log viewer and choosing a log format
The log viewer is available from the File menu from the contact list or any conversation window. It is divided into three sections:
- Top section: search parameters
- Left section: users and log files
- Right section: log display
From the Use Log Type menu you can select which logging format you want to load into the log viewer. Different logging formats can be better depending on what you are looking for. You may select another log format at any time.
Selecting one day's conversation
In the screenshot at left, the user/daily format has been loaded into the log viewer. Notice how each user is shown along with each day's conversation. To view just one day's conversation, click on the day that you want to view. The log will be loaded and displayed in the log viewer area on the right side.
When using the user format, only users will be displayed, and when using the daily format only days will be shown. You can choose a different log format at any time as shown in Logging formats above.
Selecting all conversations with a specific user
Again the user/daily format is shown, but this time we have selected a user (Jon) rather than an individual day. This will load all of the conversations with Jon into the log viewer display. This can take a little bit of time on longer log files, especially when processing XML logs with coloring enabled.
Searching all log files
The log viewer allows you to search your logs by word, user or date. Some options are not available for certain log types (e.g. it is not possible to search by user when using the daily-text format, or to search by date when using the user-text format). To search for a phrase, enter it in the text box. To search by user, check with user and enter the user's name (not shown here), and to search by date, choose from on, before, after or between and choose the date(s) for the range. The search criteria are cumulative, so you can search for a word said by a certain user during a specific date range.
Note that the results will be varied depending on the log format loaded as well as the criteria used. For example, when searching a daily/text log for a word, the entire day's log will be flagged as containing that word.
Searching the currently displayed log
If a log file is already loaded, you may search the current log by simply typing a word or phrase into the search box at the top. As shown at right, the famous "Lorem ipsum" text has been loaded into the log viewer, and we have search for the word lorum. The current search result is shown in red, and previous search results are shown in green. These colors are customizable as discussed under Advanced logging preferences above.
The URL History window
The URL History is available from the File menu of the contact list or any conversation. Or, if you choose the URL History from the right-click menu on the contact list or from the Actions menu on a conversation, the selected user's name will be automatically entered as the search criteria (as shown at left, where only URLs received from Kevin are displayed). You can double-click any entry to open that web site in your web browser.
If you right-click on an entry, you will see a popup menu like the one shown at right. From there, you can enter a comment for the selected URL, edit the URL itself, delete the URL from the history, or copy the URL to the clipboard. The URL History is saved in an XML file and can be easily read or processed by other programs.
