Activity Log AppJars: Demo

This is a runnable demo of the Activity Log AppJar: a drop-in module that turns the events that matter in your application into a searchable, filterable audit trail, with its own Vaadin views, no logging layer of your own to write.

Running the demo

You need Java 21 and Maven 3.8+. Nothing else: no database to install, no Docker.

Run mvn (the default goal is spring-boot:run) and open http://localhost:8080. No login is needed. The application starts on a landing page that presents what the AppJar does, links to each of its views and offers a guided tour of every one of them; the Tour menu in the top bar starts a tour from anywhere in the app. Data is kept in a local H2 database under ./data.

What you can try

View	What it does
Logs	The full activity log: filter by logger, detail, level, session and date-time range, sort and resize columns, inspect an entry in full (detail, session, stack trace), and turn Live on to see new entries pushed in as they are persisted.
Extractors	Rules that decide which events of your logging framework become activity logs: by level, by logger or detail pattern, within the days and times you choose, optionally storing the stack trace and the session id.
Removers	Retention rules: what the scheduled pruner is allowed to drop, and when.
Log Views	Saved, preconfigured versions of the log view (fixed filters, chosen columns, its own route) so each team gets the view it needs.

The Tour menu also walks a saved view in use, and the three editors (extractor, remover and log view) where the rules are actually configured. Each editor tour opens the preloaded entity, so it explains a filled-in form rather than an empty one.

What comes preloaded

The demo arrives configured as a real installation would be, so there is something to look at from the first screen:

Item	Preloaded as
Activity	A week of events from a fictional order-management application, from orders confirmed and paid to a payment that fails and leaves an order pending, stock running out, a locked account and a database pool that collapses and recovers, with stack traces on the errors and session ids on two of the visits.
Extractor	Application activity, active: captures every level of the com.appjars.activitylog.demo.app loggers, at any time, storing stack traces and session ids. The demo's own framework logs (Spring, Hibernate, Vaadin) fall outside that prefix and are not stored.
Remover	Prune activity older than 1 hour, inactive on purpose: every preloaded entry is older than an hour, so activating it makes the pruner drop them within seconds. That is the point: activate it and watch it work.
Log view	Application errors, published on al/errors: the ERROR level is preconfigured, so its users can filter by logger, detail, session and date-time, but never widen the level.

The drawer's Trigger log menu continues the story: each level records one more event of the order narrative, and Custom log… lets you write the logger, detail and level yourself. Entries are emitted through the application's logging framework, not saved directly, so you can watch the extractor capture them and the Live toggle show them right away, and watch nothing being stored when the logger falls outside the extractor's filters.

Everything above is created only when missing, so restarting the demo neither duplicates nor resets what you did. Delete the ./data directory to get the whole set back.

Free vs. full license

The demo runs in free mode: every feature is fully functional, limited to 100 logs per day. Once that limit is reached the log turns read-only and live updates are disabled. A full license removes the limit: nothing else changes. Licenses are available at https://www.appjars.com.

Learn more

• Documentation: https://docs.appjars.com/activity-log/overview/
• AppJars on GitHub: https://github.com/AppJars

Configurable properties

Every property the AppJar reads is listed here, and all of them are written out in src/main/resources/application.properties so they can be changed in place.

View routes

Each view is published on the route configured here. A saved log view is published on the route carried by its own configuration, not on one of these.

Property	Default	View
com.appjars.activitylog.url.activitylog	al/activitylog	The full activity log
com.appjars.activitylog.url.extractors	al/extractors	Extractor list
com.appjars.activitylog.url.extractors-create	al/extractors/create	Extractor form, creating
com.appjars.activitylog.url.extractors-edit	al/extractors/edit	Extractor form, editing
com.appjars.activitylog.url.removers	al/removers	Remover list
com.appjars.activitylog.url.removers-create	al/removers/create	Remover form, creating
com.appjars.activitylog.url.removers-edit	al/removers/edit	Remover form, editing
com.appjars.activitylog.url.logviewer	al/logviewer	Saved log view list
com.appjars.activitylog.url.logviewer-create	al/logviewer/create	Saved log view form, creating
com.appjars.activitylog.url.logviewer-edit	al/logviewer/edit	Saved log view form, editing

Retention

Property	Default	What it does
com.appjars.activitylog.logspruner.removalEnabled	true	Whether the scheduled pruner may delete the logs the active removers cover. With it false, removers can be configured but nothing is ever deleted.
com.appjars.activitylog.logspruner.pruningFrequency	5	Seconds between pruning rounds.
com.appjars.activitylog.logspruner.maxLogsPerRound	500	Most logs a single round may delete.

Capture

Property	Default	What it does
com.appjars.activitylog.appendersconnector.queueCapacity	1000	Capacity of the queue between the appender and the thread that persists. A log arriving at a full queue is discarded rather than blocking the caller.
com.appjars.activitylog.appender.autoRegister	true	Register the appender automatically when log4j2.xml does not declare it. This demo declares it, so nothing is registered automatically.
com.appjars.activitylog.appender.strict	true	Fail startup when the logging setup cannot be captured. With it false the application starts anyway and the failure is reported as a warning.

Date and time formats

Property	Default	What it does
com.appjars.activitylog.dateformat	dd-MM-yy	Pattern the views use for a date.
com.appjars.activitylog.timeformat	HH:mm	Pattern the views use for a time of day.
com.appjars.activitylog.datetimeformat	dd-MM-yyyy HH:mm:ss	Pattern the views use for a timestamp.