Live Event Log

This document explains how to use Live Event Log metrics in the Moesif’s API Analytics suite.

Overview

Live Event Log shows a real-time continuous record of all the API events and actions that take place within your application or services. The Live Event Log allows you to filter on specific attributes within the API Calls and Actions event types Moesif receives. The Live Event Log gives you an easy-to-navigate way to explore user-centric insights into API usage and user behaviors on your platform.

Use Cases

Searching and filtering in traditional logs can pose significant difficulty to get past. Moesif supports extremely simple or complex queries with ease. Moesif allows you to build queries based on the data that exists in the logs. This replaces approximations and assumptions with precise calculation and statistical insights that give you immediate value and utility. For example, if you filter on an endpoint, Moesif automatically populates the filter list with the endpoints that exist in the current data.

Moesif also supports performing analytics on HTTP body and header, meaning you can have a Moesif filter based on a specific body field and its contents. This level of granularity is one of the reasons Moesif stands apart from other API and product analytics platforms.

The following sections discuss some example use cases and applications of Live Event Log.

Real-time Monitoring

Live Event Log gives you real-time visibility into different types of events going on in your website or application. With this real-time data, you can do the following:

Monitor inbound and outbound events.
Track user activity.
Identify network issues.
Understand traffic growth.

Understanding Usage

Live Event Log offers powerful filters. You can construct simple and complex queries with a high level of granularity. This allows you to better understand your product and its users. For example:

Understand usage behavior and identify useful patterns.
Monitor traffic in different geographical locations.
Identify top users.
Identify new users and companies.
Identify suspicious activity.
Understand overall change of events over time using waterfall charts.

Create Live Event Log

To create a new Live Event Log, select + New in the navigation menu and then select Live Event Log from the API Analytics section.

This creates a new Live Event Log workspace for you.

Filters

You can refine the events Live Event Log shows you using filters. To access the filters, select the Select field list in the Filters pane.

For more information about the available filters in Live Event Log, see Reference: Analytics Filters.

You can chain multiple filters together by selecting Where and OR. You can further refine your search by selecting a user or company cohort from the Performed By list.

View Events for New Users and Companies Only

To see events for only new users and companies in Live Event Log, enable the New Users Only and New Companies Only filters respectively. These two filters allow you to see events for users or companies who’ve made their first API call within the time period you specify.

Event Data Views

You can change how Live Event Log displays event data. The following options are available:

Stream View
Table View

Stream View

The stream view shows each API Call or Action as an interactive element that you can expand for further details about the event. By default, each element displays the following information about an event:

The HTTP response status code
Elapsed duration of the HTTP request
The HTTP request method
The endpoint
Any identified user or company associated with the event
The time of the request

To turn on this view, select Stream. Expanding an element shows more details about the event.

Add Custom Fields to Display

To display more data fields in the stream view, select Select Columns and specify the fields. For example, you can select Request.Geo IP.Country as your custom field. Now in the default stream view for each event, the country where the request originates from appears.

Event Log Actions

When you select one or more events by selecting the checkboxes, the following additional actions become available in Act On Selected Events dropdown menu:

Viewing Waterfall chart.
Downloading event details.
Running API calls in Postman.
Comparing two events

View Waterfall chart: Select the Show Waterfall to generate a waterfall chart for the selected events. While the waterfall chart remains in display, you can keep selecting or clearing the event checkboxes and the chart changes accordingly.
Download event details: Select Download Events to export details of the selected events as a JSON file.
Run API calls in Postman: Live Event Log allows you to generate and export a Postman collection containing the API calls for selected events. This can help tremendously in API testing and debugging. To do so, select Run in Postman and then select Download Postman Collection.
For more information, see Replaying API Calls in Postman.
Compare two events: Live Event Log allows you to compare the request and response of two different API calls. This comes in handy in scenarios such as debugging issues within an API call. Then you can check the difference between a successful call and the one causing an error. To do so, select two different events and then select Diff 2 Events.
Moesif marks the additions and subtractions in green and red background colors. Moesif finds differences in the entire HTTP request and response cycle. This includes HTTP headers and any JSON body to aid in debugging.
Share events with team: To quickly share selected events with your team members, select Events Link. Then copy the link.

Table View

The table view shows the event data in a tabular format, similar to a spreadsheet. By default, the table contains the following information for each event:

The event ID
The time of the request
Elapsed duration of the HTTP request
The HTTP response status code
The endpoint
The HTTP request method
The identified user ID or company ID
Creation date for the user or company

To turn on this view, select Table.

Specify the Columns to Display

To specify the fields you want to display in the table view, select Select Columns and specify the fields from the Add a data field list. Then select Save. You can also remove a field from view by selecting X beside the field name.

Add Custom Columns to Display

You can also add a custom column containing calculated data from the table by selecting Add equation.

You must specify the operator for the calculation and the operands. For the operands, you can choose one or more fields from the list or specify constants.

Timestamp Values

In table view, Moesif parses the timestamp for each event into human-readable format in your timezone. To display the raw timestamp values in ISO 8601 format instead, select Original Raw Values.

Moesif gives you several options to share a Live Event Log workspace. Before you can share, you must first save the workspace to a dashboard.

After saving, follow the instructions in Sharing Workspaces to share your workspace.

Ask AI : Use AI to Get Insights About Event Metrics

Ask AI gives you an AI-powered conversational interface where you can ask questions and gain insights about event analytics data.

In a Live Event Log workspace, select Ask AI to open up the interface. By default, Moesif selects the first 30 events as target events for the AI to analyze and answer your questions about. You can also select a custom number of events and then select Ask AI. You can select a maximum of 30 events at a time.

The following animation shows how to use Ask AI to gain insights into event analytics data. The animation starts from a demo Live Event log chart. It selects the first four events and then selects the Ask AI button. The Ask AI dialog appears. The dialog shows the selected events as 'Target Events'. The animation then selects the built-in prompt 'What is interesting here' to ask the AI some interesting facts about the selected events. After some time, the response appears to the question. The animation ends

To get started, you can choose from three sample prompts. Otherwise, type in your query and press Enter.