Parsing Web Logs

http Logs Viewer can parse most types of Apache or IIS logs.

IIS Logs are parsed automatically as the header or first few lines of the log file contain all of the information for correct and successful parsing.

Apache Log files on the other hand do not have any information for parsing of the log files. This makes them slightly harder for parsing as one needs to know the correct format which is external of the log file. This format is known as the Log Format and is found in the Apache configuration file.

Not all log formats are parse-able. There are some constructs and principles that needs to be followed especially for easier parsing. Fields like User Agent and other fields that can contain spaces should be enclosed with similar characters to facilitate extraction of the field. Similarly different fields should be separated by the same character. It makes the log much more difficult if some fields are delimited by a certain character, and others are delimited with another character.