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Log4j Tutorial : Adding Log4j logger to your project

If you are new to Log4j, here is a short description on what is it and why should we care about it:

Log4j is a flexible logging library, an open source project from Apache. Using Log4j, we can replace the debugging print line statements, like System.out.println('Value is ' someVariable), with a configurable logging statement like logger.debug('Value is ' someVariable). The advantage in using Log4j is, if you do not want to print the debugging print lines in production application, you can easily switch them off using Log4j configuration file (which we will see it how, shortly).

How to add Log4j logger support to your project?

  1. Download the latest Log4j distribution from Apache website (at the time of this article is written, the latest version of Log4j is 1.2) and put the log4j-xxx.jar in your project class path. For Java web application, you can place the jar file in WEB-INF/lib folder. For Java applications, you can place the jar in any folder, but remember to add the folder to your classpath.

  2. Next we need to configure the Log4j library to our requirements. Log4j reads its configurations from log4j.properties file (or log4j.xml) placed in the CLASSPATH. Every log4j.properties file defines the following three things, mainly:

    • an Log4j Appender - this is the class file which does the actual logging. It could be a simple Console appender which writes  the log messages to stdout (screen) or a file appender, which sends the log messages to a log file.
    • a Layout - is nothing but how the log message is formatted. This format is very simlar to C languages's printf function formatting.
    • and a Logger - a logger ties the appender with the log messages that are coming from the Java application. Basically, a logger tells that the log messages from these packages should go to some appender which will log the message in the defined layout.

  3. Below is a sample log4j.properties for configuring the console appender for your project. In this properties file, we are first defining a Console appender and a layout pattern (refer this complete documentation to know what's the weired symbols in the conversion patterns means). Then we are mapping all the DEBUG level log messages from the entire application to go into the consoleAppender, since we added the consoleAppender to the rootLogger.

    #define the console appender
    log4j.appender.consoleAppender = org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender

    # now define the layout for the appender
    log4j.appender.consoleAppender.layout = org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
    log4j.appender.consoleAppender.layout.ConversionPattern=%-4r [%t] %-5p %c %x - %m%n

    # now map our console appender as a root logger, means all log messages will go to this appender
    log4j.rootLogger = DEBUG, consoleAppender

  4. In any of your Java file, add the below lines, in order to start logging.

    private static Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(MyclassName.class);
    logger.debug("this is a sample log message.");

  5. Now you are done. Run your application and you should be seeing the log messages coming in your console window.

Next: How to send log messages to a file?

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