As part of its output, LogDoor produces summary reports which contain day-by-day totals of the task's processing in terms of the number of hits, visits, bytes transferred and errors for pages within each site, and for the server as a whole. A task's summary data accumulates until it is reset with "Reset Summary Data" in the Task menu. See Appendix 2 for file formats of these summaries.
Figure 1 below shows LogDoor's output hierarchy.
Figure 1. LogDoor's Output Hierarchy
Report files for a given site go into that site's output folder. The report for the server as a whole goes into the "Overall" folder. Note that, as with Site3 in Figure 1, an alias can be used to write the output files to another location, such as into the Web hierarchy, thereby making the output files accessible over the Web. See Web Output in Appendix 1 for details on making LogDoor output Web-accessible.
With a large number of sites, report writing can be a lengthy process. To stop report writing before it has completed normally, use the Run/Suspend command in the Task menu, or the Go/Stop button in the status window. Stopping the report writing process will leave the task suspended.
The HTML and text-based summary reports can be written by the LogDoor task on a periodic basis. When these reports are written is configured through the Scheduling dialog. From the Task menu choose "Scheduling...". The Scheduling dialog appears as shown in Figure 2. below.
Figure 2. Scheduling dialog
In the "Writing Summaries" section you can choose to turn automatic report writing on or off. If turned on, you can choose to write summaries once a day at a specific time, or at a specified interval. If automatic report writing is turned off, reports can still be written "manually" with "Write Summaries Now" in the Task menu.
By default, a task outputs summary reports for the task as a whole and for each site (but not file) within the task. Alternate options can be configured through the Output Files dialog. Select "Output Files..." from the Task menu. The "Output Files" dialog appears as shown in Figure 3 below.
Figure 3. Output Files Dialog
This dialog contains four sections:
The outputting of summary reports can also be controlled on a site-by-site basis. By default, every site processed by a task will use the options set in the "Output Files" dialog, but these can be overridden for specific sites. To override a task's output options for a given site, select that site in the site list within the task's status window. Then choose Items from the Task menu, and then choose "Site Options...". The "Site Options" window appears as shown below in Figure 4.
Figure 4. Site Options Dialog
The default is to use the task default options. If you select "Use these options", you can choose whether or not to output any combination of report files (including none) for this specific site.
A task's reports can be customized in several ways:
Custom Heading
LogDoor's HTML summary reports can be customized by placing a text file named "Heading.html" in the same folder as the task file, and the text-based summary reports can be customized in the same way with a file named "Heading.txt". See Appendix 2 for details of these files.
The "Report Options..." dialog allows you to choose the format of a task's "Overall" reports, and to repeat a task's "Overall" report data in different sections, each with a different format. A section can be formatted according to the field sorted by, the time frame and the fields displayed. Additionally, a graphics file can be specified for use in bar graphs in HTML reports.
To access the "Report Options" dialog, choose "Output Files..." from the Task menu (see figure 3 above), then click on the "Report Options" button. The "Report Options dialog is shown below in Figure 5.
Figure 5. Report Options Dialog
Overall Reports - With this dialog you can define the "Overall" reports generated by LogDoor for this task. The default values are shown. It is possible to define a report with up to five similar sections, each section containing up to three sets of columns. The summary data is reported in each section according to the parameters defined for that section. By default, overall reports have one section containing three column sets. All overall reports (and all site reports -- see next subsection) also have a section which summarizes day-by-day access.
To access a given report section, use the drop-down "Overall Report Section n" menu at the top of the dialog. For a given section, the section title can be modified in the "Section Title" text box. To exclude a section from the report, choose "Section Not Included" from the "Sort By" drop-down menu. The "Sort By" menu is also used to change the sort order for the given section (sections are sorted by the column indicated, in the first column set for the section). Column sets are defined using the "Column Set n" drop-down menu. To exclude a column set from the given section, choose "Column set not included" from the Timeframe drop-down menu. To define a column set, choose that set from the "Column Set n" drop-down menu and set the time frame and columns to be included. Finally, to specify a graphics file to be used with line graphs in Overall.html (and for site HTML reports -- see next subsection), enter the URL in the "URL for Line Graph" text box as indicated in the "Line Graphs" section.
Site Reports - Site-specific reports can also be customized using the Report Options dialog. In particular, you can
You can add line graphs to LogDoor's HTML summary reports to provide a quick visual interpretation of your data. The first Hits column in each section will show the number of hits and a bar representing that number. This is implemented using a GIF-format graphics file that you supply. In the "Design Summary Report" dialog enter the URL to the graphic you wish to use in the "URL for Line Graph" text box.
This URL can be
If a GIF file is not indicated, the graphs are not drawn in HTML summary reports. A sample GIF file called line.gif is included with the software.
A reporting AppleScript can be attached to a task such that the AppleScript will be invoked, by default, once for each summary report written, thus greatly extending LogDoor's reporting capabilities. The AppleScript is also invoked at the beginning of the summary writing process, and at the end. To have an AppleScript invoked, bring up the "Output Files" dialog by choosing "Output Files..." from the Task menu. The "Output Files" dialog appears as in Figure 3 above. In the "Default Site Options" section, check "Trigger AppleScript" and use the Choose button the select a script file. Just as with other output options, whether the AppleScript is invoked can also be set on a site-by-site basis.
LogDoor's reporting AppleScript feature provides a large range of possibilities for further customizing LogDoor's reporting capabilities. For example, an AppleScript could be written to
See the folder "Reporting AppleScripts" for further details of LogDoor's reporting AppleScripts.
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