JarCastingCustomAppender
CustomAppender is a Log4j2 appender that allows you to log however you want.
License
CustomAppender is licensed under Apache License 2.0.
Dependencies
CustomAppender requires at least Java SE 6 or 7, depending on which version of Log4j2 is used. Version 2.4 and greater require 7 and versions less than 2.4 require 6. The minimum supported version of Log4j2 is 2.0.1.
Download
It can be downloaded with one of the following methods or directly from the website here.
Maven
<dependency>
<groupId>com.frostphyr</groupId>
<artifactId>customappender</artifactId>
<version>1.1.0</version>
</dependency>
Gradle
repositories {
mavenCentral()
}
implementation 'com.frostphyr:customappender:1.1.0'
Manual
A manual on how to use Log4j2 can be found here.
CustomAppender works by simply invoking a specified method with the formatted log message to be handled however you want.
| Attribute | Required | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
name |
x | String |
The name of the appender. |
class |
x | String |
The full name of the class where either the appendInstance, if specified, or the append is located. |
append |
String |
The name of the method that will be invoked when a message should be logged. The return type should be void and should accept 1 String parameter. If an appendInstance is not specified, this method should be static. If not specified, this will default to "append". |
|
appendInstance |
String |
The name of the static method that will return the instance where append will be invoked. The method should return an object of any type and have no parameters. |
|
cacheInstance |
boolean |
If false, it will reacquire the instance from appendInstance every time append is invoked. If appendInstance is not specified, this has no effect. It defaults to true. |
|
ignoreExceptions |
boolean |
If false, exceptions while appending events will be propagated to the caller. If true, exceptions will instead be internally logged and then ignored. It defaults to true. |
You can also include Filters and Layouts.
Example
Without appendInstance
This example will simply output the log message to the console.
log4j2.xml:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Configuration status="WARN" packages="com.frostphyr.custom">
<Appenders>
<Custom name="Console" class="com.frostphyr.custom.test.ConsoleAppender">
<PatternLayout pattern="%d{HH:mm:ss.SSS} [%t] %-5level %logger{36} - %msg%n"/>
</Custom>
</Appenders>
<Loggers>
<Root level="ALL">
<AppenderRef ref="Console"/>
</Root>
</Loggers>
</Configuration>
ConsoleAppender.java:
package com.frostphyr.custom.test;
public class ConsoleAppender {
public static void append(String message) {
System.out.println(message);
}
}
With appendInstance
This example will use Swing and insert the log message into a JTextArea. log4j2.xml:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Configuration status="WARN" packages="com.frostphyr.custom">
<Appenders>
<Custom name="Swing" class="com.frostphyr.custom.test.SwingAppender" append="appendTextArea" appendInstance="getInstance">
<PatternLayout pattern="%d{HH:mm:ss.SSS} [%t] %-5level %logger{36} - %msg%n"/>
</Custom>
</Appenders>
<Loggers>
<Root level="ALL">
<AppenderRef ref="Swing"/>
</Root>
</Loggers>
</Configuration>
SwingAppender.java:
package com.frostphyr.custom.test;
import javax.swing.JTextArea;
import javax.swing.SwingUtilities;
import javax.swing.text.BadLocationException;
import javax.swing.text.Document;
public class SwingAppender {
private static SwingAppender instance = new SwingAppender();
public static SwingAppender getInstance() {
return instance;
}
private JTextArea textArea = new JTextArea();
public void appendTextArea(String text) {
SwingUtilities.invokeLater(() -> {
Document doc = textArea.getDocument();
try {
doc.insertString(doc.getLength(), text, null);
} catch (BadLocationException e) {
}
});
}
}
Alternatively, instead of having a singleton in SwingAppender, the instance can be retrieved from another class. For example, in the main class:
package com.frostphyr.custom.test;
public class LoggerTest {
private static SwingAppender swingAppender = new SwingAppender();
public static void main(String[] args) {
//Do stuff
}
public static SwingAppender getSwingAppender() {
return swingAppender;
}
}
log4j2.xml would then look like:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Configuration status="WARN" packages="com.frostphyr.custom">
<Appenders>
<Custom name="Swing" class="com.frostphyr.custom.test.LoggerTest" append="appendTextArea" appendInstance="getSwingAppender">
<PatternLayout pattern="%d{HH:mm:ss.SSS} [%t] %-5level %logger{36} - %msg%n"/>
</Custom>
</Appenders>
<Loggers>
<Root level="ALL">
<AppenderRef ref="Swing"/>
</Root>
</Loggers>
</Configuration>