Files
siftlode/backend/app
peter 6c63df6704 feat: one structured log for every process, with a request id
A deployment printed four different log formats and none of them could be
joined up: uvicorn's log_config.json for the API, a hand-rolled StreamHandler in
main.py for anything not started by uvicorn, logging.basicConfig() in the worker
and in the download child (no timestamp at all), and alembic's fileConfig.
app/logs.py replaces all four with one JSON line per event (OpenTelemetry's log
data model, no SDK): ts, level, severity, source, logger, event code, message,
attributes, plus the correlation the context carries — request id, account,
download job.

Redaction is applied at the HANDLER, not at the call sites: every message, every
attribute and every traceback is scrubbed on the way out, so a secret cannot
leak by being forgotten at one of ~125 call sites. Passwords, tokens, cookies,
secret config values and email addresses never reach a line.

The access log is ours now (`http.request`): the route template instead of the
concrete path, the status, the duration and the account — and never the query
string, which uvicorn's access log printed on every single request (`?account=`,
`?source=`, the `?token=` of a share link). A well-formed client request id is
accepted and echoed in X-Request-Id, so a browser line and a server line join up.
The account comes from `request.state`, filled by the auth dependency: the
middleware is the outermost one, so it runs outside SessionMiddleware and in a
different task context.

`log_level` becomes an admin knob (sysconfig), applied without a restart and
re-applied at startup — best-effort on purpose, since a logging knob must never
be what stops the app from booting. Every compose service gets bounded json-file
logs (3×50 MB): Docker keeps every line forever by default, and the API now
writes one line per request.

Verified on the localdev stack: JSON everywhere including alembic and the
worker, the query strings gone, a supplied X-Request-Id echoed and logged, and
three /healthz hits of which only the one made while the level was DEBUG
produced a line.
2026-09-16 01:37:02 +02:00
..
2026-06-14 04:40:22 +02:00

Backend conventions

The rules below are already followed across backend/app — they lived only in a few module docstrings (demo.py, userscope.py, routes/_common.py) until this file collected them (E3 S3, B-core-20). When you add code, match these so the next reader doesn't have to guess "which pattern do I copy".

Module layering

Three layers, by who runs the code — not by feature:

  1. routes/… — request-only. A route module holds HTTP concerns: auth dependencies, request/ response models, status-code mapping, serialization. It owns logic that runs only on a request. Business logic that a request happens to trigger does not live here if anything else runs it too.

  2. plex/, downloads/, sync/ — domain logic shared by more than one caller. Anything the scheduler or the worker runs (not just a request) lives in one of these domain packages, so the route, the worker, and the scheduler share one definition. Examples from this codebase: downloads/service.py owns enqueue + the job state transitions (routes call it); plex/sync.py is run by both the admin route and the scheduler; downloads/pipeline.py is the worker's child pipeline.

  3. Flat app/*.py core modules — cross-cutting primitives. auth, sysconfig, quota, audit, notifications, userscope, realtime, ratelimit, progress, … are single-file primitives many layers import. They depend on nothing above them (a core module must never import a routes/… module).

Extraction trigger: the SECOND consumer. Keep new logic inline in its first caller. The moment a second caller needs it (a worker as well as a route; a scheduler as well as a route), extract it down a layer — into the relevant domain package, or a flat core module if it's cross-cutting. Don't pre-abstract for a single caller; don't leave shared logic duplicated once there are two.

Transaction ownership

This follows CLAUDE.md's canonical rule verbatim — "the handler/job-wrapper commits; helpers flush (only quota owns its session)" — so read it that way, not as an exception to it. The commit belongs to the operation owner; anything called inside another transaction only stages its change (db.add / flush) and lets the owner commit, so the whole operation is one transaction. audit.record() is the reference: it adds the audit row and the caller commits it together with the mutation it records, so an audit entry can never exist without its change (or vice-versa).

  • The operation owner is usually the route handler. A service.* operation the handler delegates a whole transition to (e.g. service.cancel) is that owner and commits its one transition — it isn't a mid-operation helper. A helper that owns its OWN short-lived session (the worker's jobdb writes, the same carve-out CLAUDE.md grants quota) commits that session. Everything else flushes.
  • SessionLocal is expire_on_commit=False: after a raw UPDATE + commit, an ORM object you already loaded is stale. Read the fresh value from the row (RETURNING, or a re-SELECT), not the ORM attribute — see service.decr_ref_count.

Shared counters and status: do it atomically at the DB

  • Never read-modify-write a shared counter in Python (x.count = x.count + 1). Concurrent sessions lose an update. Use a DB-atomic statement — col = col + 1, or greatest(col - 1, 0) with RETURNING so the caller branches on the post-value under the row lock (service.incr_ref_count / decr_ref_count).
  • Download job status is a JobStatus StrEnum (downloads/status.py), not bare strings. The HOLDING set defines which states hold a MediaAsset (so release accounting stays correct); STOPPED_BY_ROUTE is the route-initiated stop set. A worker child's terminal write goes through service.finalize_if_running (an atomic UPDATE … WHERE status='running') so a finishing child can't resurrect a job a route just stopped.

Config: one home per kind

  • app.config.settings — boot/env config (DB URL, download root, worker concurrency): read once at startup, not user-tunable at runtime.
  • sysconfig.SPECS — the runtime admin knobs (DB-override-or-default). A new admin-tunable value goes in SPECS; don't invent a fourth store. (state.py's maintenance_batch predates this and is slated to fold into sysconfig — do not add more like it.)

The gate

Everything below must be green before a change is done (run via siftlode check): ruff (backend) · tsc ×3 + eslint + prettier + knip (frontend) · vitest · pytest. The pytest lane runs in backend/docker-compose.test.yml — an ephemeral Postgres + the backend tree bind-mounted — so the DB-backed integration tests (the db fixture) actually run; SIFTLODE_TEST_ REQUIRE_DB=1 there turns a would-be silent skip into a hard failure. See docs/development.md.