Show entries before/after filtered entries

[Ian Gralinski]

It is sometimes useful to be able to see a few entries before or after each entry that matches the filter criteria. For example, suppose there are log entries like the following:

Code: Select all

a
b
c
d
e

If I filter the results with "Message contains" = c, I get:

Code: Select all

c

Could a feature be added to be able to specify how many additional entries to display before/after each entry that matches the filter, so that if I specified "Message contains" = c, show 1 line before, and 2 lines after, the filtered result would look like:

Code: Select all

b
c
d
e

[admin]

Hello,

Thank you for this idea that looks good to me (similar to the "context" feature provided by "grep" if I understand correctly).
Yet, how would you like to distinguish the log entries that actually match the filter from the entries that are before/after these entries? We may use colors, but colors are already used by "Mark" and "Find" features, and the log entry should also be colored with the associated log level color.

Xavier

[Ian Gralinski]

I can think of a few options, though I'm not sure how well each of these would work in practice:

• Making the entries that do not match the filter a "lighter" colour than those that do match the filter.
• Adjusting the opacity of non-matching entries.
• Defining a new colour for the non-matching entries.

[Ian Gralinski]

Some other ideas:

• Display a notice/colour in the filter bar to indicate that additional lines not matching the filter are being shown. This way the log entries displayed do not need to be modified.
• Add another column to the log entries table and indicate in there which entries match the filter and which entries do not.

[admin]

Thanks for these ideas (I like the first one because when you think of it, that's how "grep" context works: no difference between context lines and actually matching lines)

[Raitt]

You're spot on with most of these, Ian. They would be such neat little features to have.