# Modifying the http.log Format on Neo4j 2.x

**URL:** <https://community.neo4j.com/t/modifying-the-http-log-format-on-neo4j-2-x/306>\
**Category:** Operations\
**Tags:** logging, knowledge-base, http\
**Created:** [August 23, 2018, 2:41am UTC](https://community.neo4j.com/t/modifying-the-http-log-format-on-neo4j-2-x/306 "2018-08-23T02:41:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![david\_gordon1](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex021/user_avatar/community.neo4j.com/david_gordon1/32/67_2.png) [@david\_gordon1](https://community.neo4j.com/u/david_gordon1)\
**Post date:** [August 23, 2018, 2:41am UTC](https://community.neo4j.com/t/modifying-the-http-log-format-on-neo4j-2-x/306/1 "2018-08-23T02:41:18Z")

</div>

Prior to Neo4j 3.0, the http.log format was controlled by `neo4j-http-logging.xml`. The default format works fine, except when you need  
to diagnose problematic long-running queries. The HTTP requests to the `/db/data/cypher` or `/db/data/transaction` endpoints do not log the json payload with the Cypher query, which might be helpful in some situations.

The format layout options can be found in the source code [here](https://github.com/qos-ch/logback/blob/master/logback-access/src/main/java/ch/qos/logback/access/PatternLayout.java#L80).

For example, to log the cypher query, log the full request. To enable this, in the `conf/neo4j-http-logging.xml` file, you need to modify  
it as follows:

```auto
<pattern>%h %l %user [%t{dd/MMM/yyyy:HH:mm:ss Z}] "%r" %s %b "%i{Referer}" "%i{User-Agent}" %fullRequest %D</pattern>

```

_Note:_ Only change this during debugging, and then set the pattern back to the default. Otherwise, logging every full request will increase the I/O on the storage and could result in a performance impact.