How to log API requests in Rails?

Question

I have a Rails application which has an API at /api/v1/...

I would like to be able to log all the requests that are done to the API, and I know they are in the log file, but is there any alternative so that all the requests can be permanently stored?

How do you deal with this in Rails?

Answer 1

A slightly more expanded explanation for the benefit of the commenter above, since I just had to do this.

• Create a new model to store each request. This one is called ApiRequest.

class CreateApiRequests < ActiveRecord::Migration[5.2]
  def change
    create_table :api_requests do |t|
      t.belongs_to :api_key
      t.string :endpoint
      t.string :remote_ip
      t.json :payload
      t.datetime :created_at
    end
  end
end

• Use a "before_action" filter in each API Controller to call a method that will create a new ApiRequest entry and store it.

module Api
  module V2
    class SomeController < ::ApplicationController

      before_action :log_api_request

      <controller methods>

Our application is API-only, so we inherit from the top-level ApplicationController

• The method log_api_request creates an ApiRequest object as suggested by Carson above.

  def log_api_request
    ApiRequest.create(
      api_key: api_key,
      endpoint: request.fullpath,
      remote_ip: request.remote_ip,
      payload: params,
      created_at: Time.now.iso8601
    )
  end

The gist is to create your own database table/model to log API requests by calling the create consistently from the controller methods as that doesn't require any additional components beyond what's already available.