MedBrain: The Essential Audit Trail for Your PrestaShop Store

1. The Problem: Flying Blind

Every PrestaShop store manager has been there: a price changes without explanation, a product listing is modified by a colleague with no one remembering it, or worse, an object is deleted by mistake with no way to recover it.

By default, PrestaShop keeps no history of changes made to back-office objects. Whether it’s a product, customer, order, carrier or price rule, every modification simply overwrites the previous version. There is no built-in activity log that tells you:

• Who made the change
• When it happened
• Which fields were modified
• What the values were before and after the change

This lack of traceability creates serious problems on stores managed by multiple people: conflicts between team members, undetected errors, no way to roll back, and considerable time spent diagnosing where a problem originated.

2. The Solution: MedBrain

MedBrain is a comprehensive PrestaShop audit trail module that turns your back office into a fully traceable environment. It automatically records every object creation, modification and deletion, stores the complete before and after data for each change, and gives you the ability to restore any previous version with a single click.

Think of it as a versioning system — similar to Git for source code — but applied to all the data in your PrestaShop store. Every change is tracked, every version is preserved, and nothing is ever permanently lost.

3. How It Works

MedBrain relies on PrestaShop’s native hook system to intercept object operations. This approach is non-invasive: the module uses no overrides and does not modify any PrestaShop core files.

3.1. Automatic Detection

Whenever a PrestaShop object is created, updated or deleted in the back office, MedBrain intercepts the event through the actionObjectAddAfter, actionObjectUpdateBefore, actionObjectUpdateAfter and actionObjectDeleteBefore hooks. The module captures the full state of the object at each stage.

3.2. Intelligent Recording

For each event, MedBrain records:

• The object class (Product, Customer, Order, Category…)
• The object identifier
• The action type (create, update, delete)
• The complete data before and after the change (JSON format)
• The precise list of changed fields with their before/after values
• The employee who performed the action
• The exact date and time
• The employee’s IP address
• The shop identifier (multi-shop support)

3.3. Smart Change Detection

MedBrain doesn’t blindly record everything. The module compares the before and after data and identifies which fields actually changed. System fields like date_upd or updated_at are automatically ignored to prevent false positives. If an “update” operation changes no significant fields, no history entry is created.

4. Detailed Features

4.1. Automatic Tracking of 48+ Object Classes

By default, MedBrain monitors all major PrestaShop object classes:

Purely technical classes (Cache, Log, SearchEngine, StockAvailable…) are excluded by default to avoid excessive data volume. You can customise this list at any time from the module configuration.

4.2. One-Click Restoration

This is MedBrain’s flagship feature. From the detailed view of any history entry, a “Restore” button lets you revert the object to its previous state. This works for:

• Modifications: roll back to any previous version of an object
• Deletions: recreate a deleted object with all its original data, preserving its original identifier

A confirmation dialog details exactly what will be restored before proceeding, preventing accidental actions.

4.3. Field-by-Field Comparison

For every modification, MedBrain displays a clear table showing, for each changed field, the before and after values. This diff view lets you instantly identify what changed and assess whether the change was intentional.

4.4. Full Administration Interface

The module adds a dedicated admin controller with:

• Paginated, filterable list of all history entries
• Quick filters by object class (top 15 most frequent)
• Sorting by date, class, action, employee, IP
• Bulk actions (mass deletion)
• Real-time statistics (total entries, today’s count)
• Colour-coded badges for quick visual identification of action types (green = create, orange = update, red = delete)

4.5. Retention Management

To prevent uncontrolled database growth, MedBrain offers two automatic cleanup mechanisms:

• Maximum versions per object: keep only the last N versions of each object (oldest entries are automatically removed)
• Retention period: automatically delete entries older than X days

Both settings can be disabled (value 0) for unlimited history.

4.6. CSV Export

The complete history can be exported in CSV format for processing in a spreadsheet or integration with external audit tools. The export respects active filters, allowing you to extract only the relevant data.

5. Real-World Use Cases

6. Before & After MedBrain

7. Technical Specifications

The module uses a single database table (medbrain_history) with optimised indexes on the most frequently queried columns: object_class, id_object, action, id_employee and date_add. Before/after data is stored as JSON in LONGTEXT fields.

8. Installation & Configuration

8.1. Installation

Installation follows the standard process for any PrestaShop module:

1. Download the module ZIP file
2. In the PrestaShop back office, go to Modules > Module Manager
3. Click “Upload a module” and select the ZIP file
4. The module automatically creates its database table and registers on the required hooks

8.2. Configuration

After installation, access the module configuration to set up:

• Enable/Disable: turn tracking on or off at any time
• Tracked classes: tick the object classes to monitor from the full list of detected PrestaShop classes
• Ignored fields: list field names to exclude from tracking (one per line)
• Max versions: limit the number of versions kept per object (0 = unlimited)
• Retention period: automatically delete entries older than X days (0 = never)

The module is fully operational right after installation with sensible defaults. System fields (date_upd, date_update, updated_at, last_update) are automatically ignored.

9. Conclusion

In an e-commerce environment where every piece of data matters, operating without a change history is like driving without a rear-view mirror. MedBrain fills this critical gap in PrestaShop by providing complete traceability, restoration capability and the transparency essential for professional online store management.

Whether you need to secure your employees’ modifications, quickly diagnose a problem or recover deleted data, MedBrain installs in seconds and works immediately — with no complex configuration and without modifying a single PrestaShop file.