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Event Logging

Requirements​

Azure Queue (Cloud)​

The cloud instance of Bitwarden uses Azure Queue and Table Storage to handle events. Here's how this works:

  1. A user carries out an action which needs to be logged
  2. If the event is client-side (e.g. viewing a password), the client sends details of the event to the Events server project, which then calls EventService. If the event is server-side, the relevant project calls EventService itself.
  3. The event is temporarily stored in Azure Queue Storage (which is designed for handling large numbers of messages)
  4. The EventsProcessor server project runs a regular batch job to retrieve events from Queue Storage and save them to Table Storage
  5. Events are retrieved from Table Storage for viewing

To emulate this locally:

  1. Make sure you've installed and setup Azurite, as described in the Server Setup Guide

  2. Make sure that the globalSettings:events:connectionString user secret is not set, or has the default value of UseDevelopmentStorage=true

  3. Start the Events and EventsProcessor projects using dotnet run or your IDE. (Also ensure you have Api, Identity and your web vault running.)

You should now observe that your enterprise organization is logging events (e.g. when creating an item or inviting a user). These should appear in the Event Logs section of the organization vault.

Azure Storage Explorer lets you inspect the contents of your local Queue and Table Storage and is extremely useful for debugging.

Database storage (Self-hosted)​

Self-hosted instances of Bitwarden use an alternative EventService implementation to write event logs directly to the Event table in their database.

To use database storage for events:

  1. Run your local development server in a self-hosted configuration (Api, Identity and web vault)
  2. Start the Events project using dotnet run or your IDE (note: EventsProcessor is not required for self-hosted)

Distributed events (optional)​

Events can be distributed via an AMQP messaging system. This messaging system enables new integrations to subscribe to the events.

The RabbitMQ implementation adds a step that refactors the way events are handled when running locally or self-hosted. Instead of writing directly to the Events table via the EventsRepository, each event is broadcast to a RabbitMQ exchange. A new RabbitMqEventRepositoryListener subscribes to the RabbitMQ exchange and writes to the Events table via the EventsRepository. The end result is the same (events are stored in the database), but the addition of the RabbitMQ exchange allows for other integrations to subscribe.

To illustrate the ability to fan-out events, RabbitMqEventHttpPostListener subscribes to the RabbitMQ events exchange and POSTs each event to a configurable URL. This is meant to be a simple, concrete example of how multiple integrations are enabled by moving to distributed events.

mermaid

Running the RabbitMQ container​

  1. Verify that you've set a username and password in the .env file (see .env.example for an example)

  2. Use Docker Compose to run the container with your current settings:

    docker compose --profile rabbitmq up -d
    • The compose configuration uses the username and password from the env file.
    • It is configured to run on localhost with RabbitMQ's standard ports, but this can be customized in the Docker configuration.

  3. To verify this is running, open http://localhost:15672 in a browser and login with the username and password in your .env file.

Configuring the server to use RabbitMQ for events​

  1. Add the following to your secrets.json file, changing the defaults to match your .env file:

    "eventLogging": {
      "rabbitMq": {
        "hostName": "localhost",
        "username": "bitwarden",
        "password": "SET_A_PASSWORD_HERE_123",
        "exchangeName": "events-exchange",
        "eventRepositoryQueueName": "events-write-queue",
      }
    }

  2. (optional) To use the RabbitMqEventHttpPostListener, specify a queue name and destination URL that will receive the POST inside the RabbitMq object:

        "httpPostQueueName": "events-httpPost-queue",
        "httpPostUrl": "<HTTP POST URL>",
    • Tip: RequestBin provides an easy to set up server that will receive these requests and let you inspect them.

  3. Re-run the PowerShell script to add these secrets to each Bitwarden project:

    pwsh setup_secrets.ps1

  4. Start (or restart) all of your projects to pick up the new settings

With these changes in place, you should see the database events written as before, but you'll also see in the RabbitMQ management interface that the messages are flowing through the configured exchange/queues.