Unique users via logs

Count how many users you have in your structured logs

Published: Wednesday, May 4, 2022 Last modified: Monday, Dec 9, 2024

First you need to finger print your user, e.g. by setting a cookie, here I just use milliseconds since epoch:

func uniqueVisitor(next http.Handler) http.Handler {
	return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
		cookie, _ := r.Cookie("visitor")
		if cookie != nil {
			slog.Info("returning visitor", "vistor", cookie.Value)
		} else {
			setCookie := http.Cookie{Name: "visitor", Value: fmt.Sprint("visitor-", time.Now().UnixMilli()), Expires: time.Now().Add(365 * 24 * time.Hour)}
			http.SetCookie(w, &setCookie)
		}
		next.ServeHTTP(w, r)
	})
}

Once you are logging a unique visitor attribute in your logs, you can count your users!

Count distinct users

A Log insights query like:

fields @timestamp, fields.visitor
| sort @timestamp desc
| filter ispresent(fields.visitor)
| stats count_distinct(fields.visitor) by bin(1h)

Check the Amazon documentation for more sample queries.

Also do checkout: https://www.rehanvdm.com/blog/aws-serverless-you-might-not-need-third-party-monitoring