Drupal 7 Tutorial Part 16: Drupal 7 Reports & Logs Explained

Dear Drupalers,

Welcome to the the PART 16 of the Drupal 7 tutorial series. You guys are really giving me motivation to write new tutorials. In this tutorial we are gonna see various reports & logs available on Drupal 7 that comes with Drupal core and helpful for debug and data mining.

In this tutorials we are learning how to access different types of reports mentioned as below.

• Status report
• Recent log messages
• Field list
• Top 'access denied' errors
• Top 'page not found' errors
• Top search phrases

• Login as adminsitrator to see screen something like below.

• Now click on reports link next to the configuration as shown in the above screen to access various logs and reports provided by Drupal 7 Core. Once you click on the reports link you will see screen like below.

• As you see above screen, those are the different kinds of logs and reports available in Drupal 7. Let's check out each logs & reports in detail.

Status Report:

• Click on Status Report link in above screen to access status report about your site's operation and any detected problems. Once you clikc on the link you will see screen like below.

• All the errors are marked as in red needs your immediate attention. For example, in above screen it tells you need to protect your settings.php file by disabling write access.
• It also shows what Drupal version you are using. Are there any updates available for your site. Your apache server version, PHP memorylimit, Cron status, Database version, File System Status,  etc....

Recent Log Messages:

• Go back to the reports screen by clicking on Reports link on top black menu bar and then click on Recent Log messages link to view events that have recently been logged.
• Once you click on the link you will see screen like below which will show list of recently logged events in the site.

• As you can see in above screen you can access various log messages like modules enabled, disabled, installed, uninstalled, cron run activity, user related activity etc.
• This log messages can be used for Drupal Debugging.
• You can clear or remove Drupal 7 log messages by clicking on Clear Log Messages button shown in above screen.
• You can filter Drupal 7 Log Messages by Type & Severity as shown in above screen.

Field List:

• Go back to the reports screen by clicking on Reports link on top black menu bar and then click on Field List link to view overview of fields across all entities.
• You can access all fields that are used in Drupal 7 using this log.
• It displays field name, field type, Entity in which field is used as show in below screen.

Top Access Denied Errors:

• Go back to the reports screen by clicking on Reports link on top black menu bar and then click on Top Access Denied Errors link to view list of access denied pages across Drupal 7 website.
• Top access denied error report in Drupal 7 shows pages that were access denied and number of times the page was accessed.
• For example as shown in screen below , Top access denied report shows list of access denied pages.

Stay tuned with this post to learn more about other logs & reports.

Cheers,

Anil Sagar