There are many good benefits in using
slf4j
library as your Java application logging API layer. Here I will show few
examples on how to use and configure it with different loggers.
You can think of
slf4j
as an Java interface, and then you would need an implementation (ONLY ONE) at runtime to
provide the actual logging details, such as writing to STDOUT or to a file etc. Each logging implementation
(or called binding) would obviously have their own way of configuring the log output, but your application will
remain agnostic and always use the same
org.slf4j.Logger
API. Let’s see how this works in practice.
Using slf4j
with Simple logger
Create a Maven based project and this in your
pom.xml
.
<dependency>
<groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
<artifactId>slf4j-api</artifactId>
<version>1.7.5</version>
</dependency>
Now you may use
Logger
in your Java code like this.
package deng;
import org.slf4j.*;
public class Hello {
static Logger LOGGER = LoggerFactory.getLogger(Hello.class);
public static void main(String[] args) {
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
if (i % 2 == 0)
LOGGER.info("Hello {}", i);
else
LOGGER.debug("I am on index {}", i);
}
}
The above will get your program compiled, but when you run it, you will see these output.
bash> java deng.Hello SLF4J: Failed to load class "org.slf4j.impl.StaticLoggerBinder". SLF4J: Defaulting to no-operation (NOP) logger implementation SLF4J: See http://www.slf4j.org/codes.html#StaticLoggerBinder for further details.
What it’s saying is that at runtime, you are missing the logging "implementation" (or the logger binding),
so
slf4j
simply use a "NOP" implmentation, which does nothing. In order to see the output properly, you
may try use an
simple implementation that does not require any configuration at all! Just go back to your
pom.xml
and add the following:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
<artifactId>slf4j-simple</artifactId>
<version>1.7.5</version>
</dependency>
Now you see logging output on STDOUT with INFO level. This simple logger will default show any
INFO level message or higher. In order to see DEBUG messages, you would need to pass in this System Property
-Dorg.slf4j.simpleLogger.defaultLogLevel=DEBUG
at your Java startup.
Using slf4j
with Log4j logger
Now we can experiment and swap different logger implementations, but your application
code can remain the same. All we need is to replace
slf4j-simple
with another popular logger implementation,
such as the Log4j.
<dependency>
<groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
<artifactId>slf4j-log4j12</artifactId>
<version>1.7.5</version>
</dependency>
Again, we must configure logging per implementation that we picked. In this case, we need an
src/main/resources/log4j.properties
file.
log4j.rootLogger=DEBUG, STDOUT
log4j.logger.deng=INFO
log4j.appender.STDOUT=org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender
log4j.appender.STDOUT.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.STDOUT.layout.ConversionPattern=%5p [%t] (%F:%L) - %m%n
Re-run your program, and you should see similar output.
Using slf4j
with JDK logger
The JDK actually comes with a logger package, and you can replace
pom.xml
with this logger implementation.
<dependency>
<groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
<artifactId>slf4j-jdk14</artifactId>
<version>1.7.5</version>
</dependency>
Now the configuration for JDK logging is a bit difficult to work with. Not only need a config file, such as
src/main/resources/logging.properties
, but you would also need to add a System properties
-Djava.util.logging.config.file=logging.properties
in order to have it pick it up. Here is
an example to get you started:
.level=INFO
handlers=java.util.logging.ConsoleHandler
java.util.logging.ConsoleHandler.level=FINEST
deng.level=FINEST
Using slf4j
with Logback logger
The logback logger implementation is a super dupa quality implementation. If you intend to write
serious code that go into production, you may want to evaluate this option. Again modify your
pom.xml
to replace with this:
<dependency>
<groupId>ch.qos.logback</groupId>
<artifactId>logback-classic</artifactId>
<version>1.0.13</version>
</dependency>
Here is a sample of configuration
src/main/resources/logback.xml
to get things started.
<configuration> <appender name="STDOUT" class="ch.qos.logback.core.ConsoleAppender"> <encoder> <pattern>%d{HH:mm:ss.SSS} [%thread] %-5level %logger{36} - %msg%n</pattern> </encoder> </appender> <logger name="deng" level="DEBUG"/> <root level="INFO"> <appender-ref ref="STDOUT" /> </root> </configuration>