日志文件与数据库在哪里保存用户活动数据以进行分析？

Question

I am currently working on a website which have functionality of login. I need to track user activities like time of login-logout, total duration of browsing, IP Address , location etc. This all data will be used for analysis and security purposes.

Now , there are two options (at least i know) to save such a huge data either in database or in log files.

What is right thing to do save in DB or in logs? .

In case anyone wants to know, i am using using PHP as programming language and MySQL as DB and don't have any experience in data analysis.

Answer 1

Better to go with DB because if you want to analyze or sort login tries by IP, location ..etc. you can easily do that with MySQL queries but when you go to log you should have an editor and search for something will be really hard. I personally log the same functionality in my app here is some code how to get browser info and IP.

<?php

function log_login_activity($loginEmail, $loginAuthType = '', $loginAttemptStatus = '', $error = '', $loginRedirect = '',$HeaderInfo = ''){
    $loginTime = time();
    $browserInfo = getBrowser();
    $browser = $browserInfo['name'].' '.$browserInfo['version'];
    $loginIP = isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR']) ? $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'] : $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
    $protocol = (!empty($_SERVER['HTTPS']) && $_SERVER['HTTPS'] !== 'off' || $_SERVER['SERVER_PORT'] == 443) ? "HTTPS" : "HTTP";
    $browserAgent = $browserInfo['userAgent'];
    DB::insert('?:login_logs',array('email' => $loginEmail, 'time' =>$loginTime, 'browserInfo' =>$browser, 'loginAuthType' =>$loginAuthType, 'IP' =>$loginIP, 'error' => $error, 'protocol' => $protocol, 'loginRedirect' => $loginRedirect, 'browser' => $browserAgent));
}