NGINX App Protect WAF Access Log

Access Logs

Access log is NGINX’s request log mechanism. It is controlled by two directives.

log_format

This directive determines the format of the log messages using predefined variables. App Protect will enrich this set of variables with several security log attributes that are available to be included in the log_format. If log_format is not specified then the built-in format combined is used but, because that format does not include the extended App Protect variables, this directive must be used when the user wants to add App Protect information to the log.

access_log

This directive determines the destination of the access_log and the name of the format. The default is the file /etc/nginx/log/access.log using the combined format. In order to use the custom format that includes the NAP variables, use this directive with the name of the desired format.

App Protect Variables for Access Log

These are the variables added to Access Log. They are a subset of the Security log attributes. The Security log names are prefixed with $app_protect.

Note that many of the other Security log attributes that are not included here have exact or similar parallels among the NGINX variables also available for access log. For example, $request is parallel to the request security log attribute. See the full list of NGINX variables.

Example

http {
    log_format security_waf 'request_time=$request_time client_ip=$remote_addr,'
                             'request="$request", status=$status,'
                             'waf_policy=$app_protect_policy_name, waf_request_id=$app_protect_support_id'
                             'waf_action=$app_protect_outcome, waf_action_reason=$app_protect_outcome_reason';

    server {

        location / {
            access_log /etc/app_protect/logs/nginx-access.log security_waf;
            ...
        }
    }
}