Detailed recording of traffic analytics

When traffic analytics are enabled the Gateway will not, by default, include the request and response payloads in these transaction records. This minimizes the size of the records and also avoids logging any sensitive content.

You can, however, configure Tyk to capture the payloads in the transaction records if required. This can be particularly useful during development and testing phases or when debugging an issue with an API.

This is referred to as detailed recording and can be enabled at different levels of granularity. The order of precedence is:

1. API level
2. Key level
3. Gateway level

Consequently, Tyk will first check whether the API definition has detailed recording enabled to determine whether to log the request and response bodies. If it does not, then it will check the key being used in the request and finally it will check the Gateway configuration.

Configuration at the API level

You can enable detailed recording at a granular level (only for specific APIs) using configuration within the API definition.

Detailed recording with Tyk OAS APIs

When working with Tyk OAS APIs, you should configure detailedActivityLogs: "true" in the x-tyk-api-gateway.server object, for example:

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{
    "components": {},
    "info": {
        "title": "example-detailed-recording",
        "version": "1.0.0"
    },
    "openapi": "3.0.3",
    "paths": {
        "/xml": {
            "get": {
                "operationId": "xmlget",
                "responses": {
                    "200": {
                        "description": ""
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    },
    "x-tyk-api-gateway": {
        "info": {
            "name": "example-detailed-recording",
            "state": {
                "active": true
            }
        },
        "upstream": {
            "url": "http://httpbin.org/"
        },
        "server": {
            "detailedActivityLogs": {
                "enabled": true
            },
            "listenPath": {
                "value": "/example-detailed-recording/",
                "strip": true
            }
        }
    }
}

The configuration above is a complete and valid Tyk OAS API Definition that you can import into Tyk to try out detailed recording. It will generate detailed transaction records for all calls made to the /example-detailed-recording API.

In the Dashboard UI, you can configure detailed recording using the Enable Detailed Activity Logs option in the API Designer.

Detailed recording with Tyk Classic APIs

When working with Tyk Classic APIs, you should configure enable_detailed_recording: "true" in the root of the API definition:

"enable_detailed_recording": true

In the Dashboard UI, you can configure detailed recording using the Enable Detailed Logging option in Core Settings.

Detailed recording with Tyk Operator

The process for configuring detailed recording using Tyk Operator is similar to that explained in Detailed recording with Tyk Classic APIs.

The example API Definition below enabled detailed recording by setting spec.enable_detailed_recording to true.

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apiVersion: tyk.tyk.io/v1alpha1
kind: ApiDefinition
metadata:
  name: httpbin
spec:
  name: httpbin
  use_keyless: true
  protocol: http
  active: true
  enable_detailed_recording: true
  proxy:
    target_url: http://httpbin.org
    listen_path: /httpbin
    strip_listen_path: true

Configuration at the key level

An alternative approach to controlling detailed recording is to enable it only for specific access keys. This is particularly useful for debugging purposes where you can configure detailed recording only for the key(s) that are reporting issues.

You can enable detailed recording for a key simply by adding the following to the root of the key’s JSON file:

"enable_detailed_recording": true

Configuration at the gateway level

Detailed recording can be configured at the system level, affecting all APIs deployed on the Gateway, by enabling the detailed recording option in tyk.conf.

{
    "enable_analytics" : true,
    "analytics_config": {
        "enable_detailed_recording": true
    }
}