Templates

How they work

The Template decides the Views you see and what filters each View has. The default template is boringly called 'Default'. You can however create more templates to match different types of logs.

Say you work with 3 applications. Very likely, you'll want a template per application (each application will have its own Views).

LogWizard does its best to accomodate. When you open a log file, LogWizard will automatically create a new template matching the name of the file. Say you open the file Pidgin.log. Logwizard will create a template called Pidgin.

Every view you create and edit, every filter you make, is automatically saved in that template (Pidgin, in our case. Next time you open this log file, we'll automatically re-open the Pidgin template, and reshow the views you've previously created.

Say you open a new log file - called Yahoo.log. LogWizard, by default, will create a template called Yahoo. Again, you can create, edit views as you please. Or, say this matches some template you've created before. Just show the Source Pane (Alt-O), and manually select that template from the Template combobox. That's all!

So, if your Yahoo.log mathes the Pidgin template, you will select it, and bam - you'll benefit from everything you saved there! Now, any change you make to the views and/or filters, are saved in the Pidgin template. And, all files using the Pidgin template will benefit from that!

By default, when you open a new log:

• If the log name (excluding directory and extension) matches any existing template, we'll use that template. You can override this, as pointed below:
• If the log file contains some specific text in its header (namely, in its 8192 bytes), you can have that log file automatically match a certain template.
• If the log does not fall into any of the above cases, we'll create a new template, excluding directory and extension, and go from there.

Match logs to templates

The second case is very important. Say you have created the Pidgin template. But your customers are sending you logs such as Pidgin001.log, mycustomp.log, my29395529.log, and so on - but they are all Pidgin logs.

Thus, every time you open such a log file, you would need to manually select the Pidgin template to view the information you need.

Or, you can go to Preferences (Ctrl-P), go to Auto Match Template, and add a line that will point to your log template. Here's how:

Probably 99.99% of the time, each log will contain, at its beginning, some welcome/starting message that indirectly identifies the log (template). Messages can be in the form of Starting Pidgin v1.02.2334 at 24 april 2015 or so.

You just need to specify the text that is always written (such as, Starting Pidgin v) and there you go. LogWizard will auto match any file containing that to your Pidgin template. Much more stress free for you!