AshEventLog

Lightweight, centralized event logging for Ash resources.

Inspired by ash_events and ash_paper_trail, AshEventLog takes a different set of trade-offs:

• Simpler than ash_events — focused on audit logging only, with no event sourcing or replay. Less infrastructure to set up and maintain.
• Easier to query than ash_paper_trail — all events live in a single centralized table rather than per-resource version tables, making cross-resource queries straightforward.
• Non-blocking — events are written asynchronously after the action completes, so logging never slows down your writes.

How it works

All create, update, and destroy actions across your tracked resources are automatically logged to a single events table. Each event records the resource, action, changed data, actor, and metadata.

Usage

1. Define your event log resource

defmodule MyApp.Events.Event do
  use Ash.Resource,
    domain: MyApp.Events,
    data_layer: AshPostgres.DataLayer,
    extensions: [AshEventLog.EventLog]

  postgres do
    table "events"
    repo MyApp.Repo
  end

  event_log do
    persist_actor_primary_key :user_id, MyApp.Accounts.User
  end
end

2. Add tracking to your resources

defmodule MyApp.Blog.Post do
  use Ash.Resource,
    extensions: [AshEventLog.Resource]

  event_log do
    event_log MyApp.Events.Event
    ignore_actions [:background_recalculate]
  end
end

That's it. All non-ignored actions on Post will now be logged to the events table.

Installation

def deps do
  [
    {:ash_event_log, "~> 0.1.0"}
  ]
end