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Picture this: your Rails app logs under several groups, such as rails, shop, and audit. You want to see only the shop lines, but can’t remember whether the field is called group or namespace. The Logs query bar suggests fields, operators, and severity values as you type. Use the suggestions to build a query without memorizing the syntax. You can also type a query directly and pick suggestions for the parts you don’t remember.

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Build a query

Select the query bar to open suggestions grouped under Fields and Attributes:
  • Fields are available on every log line: severity, hostname, group, and message.
  • Attributes are the keys AppSignal finds in the JSON of the log lines shown, such as amount or cart_id. The list shows five attributes until you type. Type part of a name to filter the list.
Logs query bar containing a typed query that ends in AND, with a dropdown listing the fields severity, hostname, group, and message, then attributes such as amount, attempt, and cart_id

Suggestions grouped under Fields and Attributes, shown after AND for the next filter

Say a background job fails and you want every error-level line that mentions Active Job. Build severity=error AND message:"ActiveJob" from the suggestions:
  1. Select severity. Severity skips the operator step and offers the severity levels, such as error, warn, and info. These suggestions insert text into the query but you can still type or edit them directly.
  2. Select error. The bar now reads severity=error.
  3. Type a space and select AND from the join suggestions, or type it yourself.
  4. Select message, then choose an operator: contains, is, is not, or does not contain. Select contains and the bar reads severity=error AND message:.
  5. Type "ActiveJob" and press Enter to run the query. Quotes are optional for one word and required once the value contains a space, such as message:"Error performing".
The page now shows only error-level lines whose message contains ActiveJob. Add AND group=shop to narrow it to one group. To match more than one severity, combine filters with OR, for example (severity=error OR severity=warn). Use the arrow keys to highlight a suggestion and Enter to insert it. With no suggestion highlighted, Enter runs the query. Press Escape to close the suggestions. Select the clear button at the right of the bar to remove the query and show all logs. While the query bar has focus, live tailing pauses so the current lines stay in place. It resumes when you leave the bar.

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Type a query directly

The query bar is a text field, so you can also type or paste a query. The full Log Query Syntax still works in the bar if you need more than the logs autocomplete suggestions offer. Logs query autocomplete is in beta through AppSignal Labs and sits behind a feature flag. Contact Support to enable it for your organization. Share feedback on our Discord server. Once a query returns the lines you need, you can turn them into a log-based metric without leaving the page.