Stopped logging Docker healthcheck pings in dev

[9larsons]

Summary

• Filtered Docker's healthcheck pings out of Ghost's request log so steady-state pnpm dev access logs only show real traffic.
• Two changes:
  • compose.dev.yaml: ghost-dev healthcheck now sends User-Agent: GhostDockerHealthcheck/1.0 (Node's global fetch defaults to User-Agent: node, too generic to filter on safely).
  • ghost/core/core/server/web/parent/middleware/log-request.js: when the UA matches that exact string, skip both response listeners and next() immediately.

Why

The ghost-dev container runs a healthcheck against GET / every 30s. In steady-state dev that's the dominant access-log line — ~120 INFO "GET /" 200 ... entries per hour that bury real HTTP traffic when you're trying to see what the admin / portal / a curl is actually doing.

Verification

• New unit test (test/unit/server/web/parent/middleware/log-request.test.js) covers four paths via supertest: normal request logged, exact healthcheck UA skipped, near-miss UA (GhostDockerHealthcheck/2.0) still logged, generic node UA still logged. 4/4 passing.
• Lint clean on both touched files.
• Skipped end-to-end docker verification: another worktree owned the running ghost-dev stack and I didn't want to clobber an active session. To verify manually after merge:
  1. pnpm dev:daemon from a fresh shell, wait 90s.
  2. docker logs ghost-dev --since 90s | grep "GET /" — should have no healthcheck lines.
  3. curl -A "GhostDockerHealthcheck/1.0" http://localhost:2368/ — should NOT appear in the log.
  4. curl http://localhost:2368/ — should appear in the log.

Test plan

• pnpm dev:daemon, wait 90s, confirm docker logs ghost-dev | grep "GET /" has no healthcheck lines.
• Manual probes with the two UAs above behave as expected.

[coderabbitai]

Walkthrough

The Docker healthcheck command in compose.dev.yaml is updated to send a custom user-agent header (GhostDockerHealthcheck/1.0) with its fetch request. The log-request middleware gains a HEALTHCHECK_USER_AGENT constant and an early-exit guard that calls next() immediately—bypassing all timing and logging setup—when the incoming request's user-agent exactly matches that value. A new unit test file validates logging behavior for the exact healthcheck UA, similar but non-matching UAs, and other common UAs.

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 4

✅ Passed checks (4 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly states the main change: Docker healthcheck pings are no longer logged in dev.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description matches the changeset and explains the logging filter, healthcheck UA, and test coverage.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

✨ Finishing Touches

📝 Generate docstrings

• Create stacked PR
• Commit on current branch

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Commit unit tests in branch skip-healthcheck-log

---

Thanks for using CodeRabbit! It's free for OSS, and your support helps us grow. If you like it, consider giving us a shout-out.

❤️ Share

• X
• Mastodon
• Reddit
• LinkedIn

_{Comment @coderabbitai help to get the list of available commands.}

[nx-cloud]

🤖 Nx Cloud AI Fix

Ensure the fix-ci command is configured to always run in your CI pipeline to get automatic fixes in future runs. For more information, please see https://nx.dev/ci/features/self-healing-ci

---

View your CI Pipeline Execution ↗ for commit eef8bfe

Command	Status	Duration	Result
nx run ghost:test:ci:integration	✅ Succeeded	2m 38s	View ↗
nx run ghost:test:integration	✅ Succeeded	2m 34s	View ↗
nx run ghost:test:legacy	✅ Succeeded	2m 52s	View ↗
nx run ghost:test:e2e	✅ Succeeded	2m 19s	View ↗
nx run-many --target=build --projects=tag:publi...	✅ Succeeded	2s	View ↗
nx run-many -t test:unit -p ghost	✅ Succeeded	23s	View ↗
nx run-many -t lint -p ghost-monorepo,ghost	✅ Succeeded	27s	View ↗
nx run @tryghost/admin:build	✅ Succeeded	5s	View ↗
Additional runs (2)	✅ Succeeded	...	View ↗

💡 Verify your cache is correct by running tasks in a sandbox. Read docs ↗

---

☁️ Nx Cloud last updated this comment at 2026-06-29 23:43:25 UTC

[coderabbitai]

Actionable comments posted: 1

🤖 Prompt for all review comments with AI agents

Verify each finding against current code. Fix only still-valid issues, skip the
rest with a brief reason, keep changes minimal, and validate.

Inline comments:
In `@ghost/core/core/server/web/parent/middleware/log-request.js`:
- Around line 3-4: The log bypass keyed off HEALTHCHECK_USER_AGENT in
log-request.js is currently global, so spoofed User-Agent values can suppress
logs outside development; update the middleware to only skip logging when the
environment is development (for example by checking the existing dev flag/config
in the same request path) and keep normal logging for all other environments.
Use the existing HEALTHCHECK_USER_AGENT constant and the log-request middleware
entrypoint to scope the bypass, and add a regression test that verifies the
non-development case still logs even when the healthcheck user agent is present.

🪄 Autofix (Beta)

Fix all unresolved CodeRabbit comments on this PR:

• Push a commit to this branch (recommended)
• Create a new PR with the fixes

---

ℹ️ Review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Path: .coderabbit.yaml

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

Run ID: beae98c2-0a38-4b14-ae57-768516890f4a

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 5734a5d and eef8bfe.

📒 Files selected for processing (3)

• compose.dev.yaml
• ghost/core/core/server/web/parent/middleware/log-request.js
• ghost/core/test/unit/server/web/parent/middleware/log-request.test.js

[coderabbitai]

🔒 Security & Privacy | 🟠 Major | ⚡ Quick win

Scope the log bypass to development only.

This middleware runs outside Docker dev too, so a client can suppress access/error logs anywhere by spoofing User-Agent: GhostDockerHealthcheck/1.0. The compose change is dev-only, but this skip is global.

Suggested fix

 module.exports = function logRequest(req, res, next) {
-    if (req.headers['user-agent'] === HEALTHCHECK_USER_AGENT) {
+    if (process.env.NODE_ENV === 'development' && req.headers['user-agent'] === HEALTHCHECK_USER_AGENT) {
         return next();
     }

Please also add a regression test for the non-development case.

Also applies to: 13-15

🤖 Prompt for AI Agents

Verify each finding against current code. Fix only still-valid issues, skip the
rest with a brief reason, keep changes minimal, and validate.

In `@ghost/core/core/server/web/parent/middleware/log-request.js` around lines 3 -
4, The log bypass keyed off HEALTHCHECK_USER_AGENT in log-request.js is
currently global, so spoofed User-Agent values can suppress logs outside
development; update the middleware to only skip logging when the environment is
development (for example by checking the existing dev flag/config in the same
request path) and keep normal logging for all other environments. Use the
existing HEALTHCHECK_USER_AGENT constant and the log-request middleware
entrypoint to scope the bypass, and add a regression test that verifies the
non-development case still logs even when the healthcheck user agent is present.