What means the part between the date and the server answer in Apache’s log?

Question

I have in the log file a following line:

xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx;[05/Aug/2016:00:00:48 +0200];GET /extensions/css/example.css?rev=example HTTP/1.1;200;66931;http://www.example.com/page.html

Please explain me, what means the part between the date and the server answer? I'm a bit perplexed about it - it isn't a redirect URL, but what is it then?

Edit: I come to decision, that i've completely misformulated my question - sorry for that.

I don't mean with my question, what are the senses of certain url parts, like rev=example etc. I'm rather interesting, why are in the log entry two kinds of url: one of them, the first, beginning with GET, and the second at the entry's end.

I thought firstly its a kind of redirect - but no, the answer code is 200. So what mean two urls / paths in this log entry?

Answer 1

The first URL should be the file that is access, while the second one is the referrer, aka the file/page that made the browser access the first URL.

You can configure what shows up in your log files. Typically by modifying the 'LogFormat' lines in your /etc/apache2/apache2.conf More information about what information you can show: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_log_config.html

Answer 2

Assuming you are talking about GET /extensions/css/example.css?rev=example

The log is telling you that on the page http://www.example.com/page.html a GET request was made of /extensions/css/example.css with the key being rev and the data being example

If you aren't familiar with querystrings, the URL is passing data to the file it is requesting. Assuming there is some code to parse the data something will happen if rev=example. Something different might happen if rev=production (for instance).

You can also POST data to a page to modify the result, in this case it doesn't appear in the URL and usually done via a form.