Apache2GDL: How Visitors Browse Your Site
Apache2GDL is a Perl script that automatically generates visitor movement graphs from Apache log files, thus helping you answer the following questions:
- Which paths do visitors to your site take to get from page A to page B?
- Which paths are more popular than others?
- Are there one-way paths and dead-end pages?
- And the ever-popular: Which pages get the most hits?
Examples
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Nodes represent pages of a given Web site while edges represent visitor movements between them. Node colors and edge thicknesses reflect the number of visitors that have visited a particular page or followed a particular path. Optionally, edges can be labeled with the number of visitors that have followed them.
Downloads
Apache2GDL © 2005 AbsInt Angewandte Informatik GmbH. The script may be freely distributed as long as it is not modified in any way. You may make enhancements for your personal use, but please let us know so we can share them with the aiSee community.
Installation
> gunzip apache2gdl.pl.gz > chmod 755 apache2gdl.pl
Usage
> cat <log file> | apache2gdl.pl [URL pattern] > <graph file>
The URL pattern should be set to the
name of your domain (example.com) or a particular directory
within that domain (example.com/something). Example:
> cat /var/log/absint_com_2004_access.log | \ apache2gdl.pl absint.com/aisee/download > \ graph.gdl
You can specify a list of directories as well:
> cat /var/log/aisee_com_access.log | \ apache2gdl.pl aisee.com/gdl aisee.com/svg aisee.com/png > \ graph.gdl
Instead of writing the graph to a file, you can directly pipe it through aiSee 2 and get a mapped SVG or PNG image of the layout. Examples:
> cat /var/log/access.log | \ ./apache2gdl.pl aisee.com/apache2gdl | \ ~/aiSee/bin/aisee.bin -color -svgoutput graph.svg - |
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> cat /var/log/access.log | \ apache2gdl.pl aisee.com/apache2gdl | \ aisee -htmloutput graph.html \ -pngoutput graph.png \ -lm 0px -tm 0px -scale 100 - |
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aiSee 3 does not support piping graphs through it (yet). You will have to first save the graph as GDL, and then export it:
> cat <log file> | apache2gdl.pl [URL pattern] > graph.gdl > aisee3 --export graph.png --export graph.html graph.gdl
For further help, type aisee3 --help.
Known issues
Including a trailing slash in the URL pattern
may result in a different graph being produced.
Useful links
Reviews
- Graph visualization for Apache log files by Oleg Burlaca (19 January 2009)
Your feedback
If you have any questions to ask or bugs to report, fire off an email to alex@absint.com. You can also rate the script at freshmeat.net.