How to get user activity on your web application

Activity log

This is an open source laravel project that you can use to monitor whatever post activity a user create on your project (The most reputable Laravel package provided for detecting user agent is Agent developed by Jens Segers and its the one I will use. All the information you need to know about user are accessible by using Agent)

it saves the user

• device
• platform
• browser
• IP address
• user auth id
• user auth email
• user activity

in your laravel project run:

composer require jenssegers/agent


Then find the config/app.php and then find providers array add:


Jenssegers\Agent\AgentServiceProvider::class,


In the same config/app.php file find the aliases array and add:

'Agent' => Jenssegers\Agent\Facades\Agent::class,

then run:


php artisan make:model ActivityLog -m

this will create 2 files

1. ActivityLog.php in your app folder
2. activity log migration file in your database/migration folder (something like 2020_06_21_151755_create_activity_logs_table) open your ActivityLog.php and add the following codes inside the class {...}

protected $fillable = [
'device',
'platform',
'browser',
'ip_address',
'user_id',
'user_email',
'user_activity'
];


open your migration file in 2 above and add the following lines inside the schema function after $table->id();

        $table->string('device');
        $table->string('platform');
        $table->string('browser');
        $table->string('ip_address');
        $table->string('user_id')->nullable();
        $table->string('user_email');
        $table->string('user_activity');

if you don't have an authentication scaffold already in your project run:

php artisan make:auth for laravel 5.8 and below

for laravel 6.0 and above run:
composer require laravel/ui

php artisan ui vue --auth


create a folder called "Services" in your app folder and create a file called ActivityService.php (app\services\ActivityServices.php), open your ActivityService.php file and add the following code:

<?php

namespace App\Services;
use App\ActivityLog;
use Jenssegers\Agent\Agent;
class ActivityService
{
protected $activityLog;
public function __construct(
ActivityLog $activityLog
) {
$this->activityLog = $activityLog;
}

public function enterActivity($user_activity,$email)
{
    $agent = new Agent();
    $platform = $agent->platform();
    // Ubuntu, Windows, OS X, ...
    $browser = $agent->browser();
    // Chrome, IE, Safari, Firefox, ...
    $this->activityLog->create([
        'platform' => $agent->version($platform),
        'browser' => $agent->version($browser),
        'device' => $agent->device(),
        'ip_address' => \Request::ip(),
        'user_id' => null,
        'user_email' => $email,
        'user_activity' => $user_activity
    ]);
}

}

run migration in order to create the activity log table in your DB


open RegisterController.php and call the Activity service:
use App\Services\ActivityService;

in your RegisterController class add protected $activityService;

in your __construct() method add ActivityService $activityService and in the __construct() function add $this->activityService = $activityService;
your __construct() method code should look like


protected $activityService;
public function __construct(ActivityService $activityService)
{
$this->activityService = $activityService;
$this->middleware('guest');
}
then add the below code in your create function

$user_activity = 'user attempted to login';
$email = $data['email'];
$this->activityService->enterActivity($user_activity,$email);

try to register, once you have registered, check the activity log table you will see all the details of the person
including his IP address, the $user_activity can be changed to whatever you like depending on the user activity, The service can be called anywhere in your controller, just remember to include the $user_activity and $email

below is the github link to the repo, you can fork it if you wish:

hope this helps, I can be reached via damilola.yakubu@yahoo.com

twitter: https://twitter.com/dammydev

Thanks