Log4j MDC (Mapped Diagnostic Context) : Example code

As a continuation of my previous post about Log4j MDC (Mapped Diagnostic Context), here’s a fully working code sample explaining the concept. This is a simple example where we have a one servlet and one filter. The filter intercepts each and every request and put the user name in the MDC.

The Simple Servlet Class

package com.veerasundar.code.log4jmdc;

import java.io.IOException;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

import org.apache.log4j.Logger;

/**
 * A good-for-nothing servlet which is just writing few messages to the logger
 * object. Since we've configured in the log4j.properties file to include the
 * userName, taken from MDC, every message will be appended with the user name
 * that is set from the AuthenticationFilter
 *
 * @author veerasundar.com/blog
 */
public class Log4jMdcDemo extends HttpServlet {

	private static Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(Log4jMdcDemo.class);

	private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

	public Log4jMdcDemo() {
	}

	/**
	 * @see HttpServlet#doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse
	 *      response)
	 */
	protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest request,
			HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {
		doService(request, response);
	}

	/**
	 * @see HttpServlet#doPost(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse
	 *      response)
	 */
	protected void doPost(HttpServletRequest request,
			HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {
		doService(request, response);
	}

	protected void doService(HttpServletRequest request,
			HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {

		logger.info("This is  demo for the Log4j MDC concept");
		logger.info("From Veerasundar.com/blog");
		logger.debug("Just some sample messages");
	}
}

A Filter to put the user name in MDC for every request call

package com.veerasundar.code.log4jmdc;

import java.io.IOException;

import javax.servlet.Filter;
import javax.servlet.FilterChain;
import javax.servlet.FilterConfig;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.ServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.ServletResponse;

import org.apache.log4j.MDC;

/**
 * An example authentication filter which is used to intercept all the requests
 * for fetching the user name from it and put the user name to the Log4j Mapped
 * Diagnostic Context (MDC), so that the user name could be used for
 * differentiating log messages.
 *
 * @author veerasundar.com/blog
 *
 */
public class AuthenticationFilter implements Filter {

	@Override
	public void doFilter(ServletRequest request, ServletResponse response,
			FilterChain chain) throws IOException, ServletException {

		try {
			/*
			 * This code puts the value "userName" to the Mapped Diagnostic
			 * context. Since MDc is a static class, we can directly access it
			 * with out creating a new object from it. Here, instead of hard
			 * coding the user name, the value can be retrieved from a HTTP
			 * Request object.
			 */
			MDC.put("userName", "veera");

			chain.doFilter(request, response);

		} finally {
			MDC.remove("userName");
		}

	}

	@Override
	public void init(FilterConfig arg0) throws ServletException {
	}

	@Override
	public void destroy() {
	}

}

Web.xml file to glue together Servlet and Filter

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app id="WebApp_ID" version="2.4"
	xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
	xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd">
	<servlet>
		<description>
		</description>
		<display-name>Log4jMdcDemo</display-name>
		<servlet-name>Log4jMdcDemo</servlet-name>
		<servlet-class>com.veerasundar.code.log4jmdc.Log4jMdcDemo</servlet-class>
	</servlet>
	<servlet-mapping>
		<servlet-name>Log4jMdcDemo</servlet-name>
		<url-pattern>/Log4jMdcDemo</url-pattern>
	</servlet-mapping>

	<filter>
		<filter-name>AuthFilter</filter-name>
		<filter-class>com.veerasundar.code.log4jmdc.AuthenticationFilter</filter-class>
	</filter>

	<filter-mapping>
		<filter-name>AuthFilter</filter-name>
		<url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
	</filter-mapping>

</web-app>

Log4j.properties file which uses the data present in MDC

# sample log4j.properties file, explaining log4j MDC concept
# author: veerasundar.com/blog

log4j.appender.consoleAppender = org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender
log4j.appender.consoleAppender.layout = org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout

#note the %X{userName} - this is how you fetch data from Mapped Diagnostic Context (MDC)
log4j.appender.consoleAppender.layout.ConversionPattern = %-4r [%t] %5p %c %x - %m - %X{userName}%n

log4j.rootLogger = DEBUG, consoleAppender

I hope that code explains the concept of MDC. Do let me know if you have any questions/suggestions in the comments.

Tagged as: code, Java, linkedin, log4j, mdc