Skip to content

Dashboard Guide

The Django Orbit dashboard is your mission control center, available at /orbit/ (by default). It provides a real-time, unified view of your application's telemetry.

The sidebar groups events by type. The number in the badge indicates the total count of captured events for that type. The sidebar is scrollable when you have many event types.

Core Events

Type Icon Description
All Events 📋 Unified feed of everything
Requests 🌐 HTTP requests (method, path, status, duration)
Queries 🗄️ SQL queries with N+1 detection
Logs 📝 Python logging messages
Exceptions ⚠️ Unhandled exceptions with tracebacks

Extended Events

Type Icon Description
Cache 🟠 Cache operations (hits, misses, sets)
Commands 🟣 Management command executions
Models 🔵 ORM signals (post_save, post_delete)
HTTP Client 🩷 Outgoing HTTP requests (httpx, requests)
Dumps 🟢 Custom debug dumps via orbit.dump()
Mail 💜 Email sending operations
Signals ⚡ Django signals

Phase 3 Events (v0.5.0+)

Type Icon Description
Jobs ⏰ Background jobs (Celery, Django-Q, RQ, APScheduler)
Redis 🔴 Redis operations (GET, SET, DEL, HGET, etc.)
Gates 🛡️ Permission/authorization checks

Use the search bar in the header to find specific entries:

  • By UUID: Paste a specific Entry ID to jump to it
  • By Content: Text search searches inside the JSON payload

Stats Panel

When viewing All Events, a collapsible stats panel shows key metrics:

  • Request count
  • Error rate
  • Slow queries percentage
  • Mini charts

For detailed analytics, click the Stats button to open the Stats Dashboard.

Export

Export data for offline analysis:

  • Export All: Download button streams all entries as JSON
  • Single Entry: Open any entry and use the header link

Detailed Views

Click on any row in the feed to open the Detail Panel.

JSON Payload

The core of every entry is its JSON payload. Orbit renders this with syntax highlighting, making it easy to explore complex data structures.

Orbit groups events by "Family". For example, if an HTTP Request triggers 5 SQL Queries and 1 Log message, they share the same family_hash.

When viewing the Request, you'll see the queries and logs listed in the "Related Entries" section.

Duplicate Queries (N+1 Detection)

When viewing a query marked as duplicate, a special section appears showing all queries with the same SQL. This helps debug N+1 query issues:

  • Click any duplicate to view its details
  • Tips for optimization (select_related(), prefetch_related()) are shown

Actions

Action Description
Pause/Resume Stop live feed to inspect entries
Clear All Purge all recorded data
Refresh Manually reload current view
Stats Open the Stats Dashboard

Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Escape: Close detail panel
  • Click outside: Close detail panel

Next Steps