CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javadatetimetimezonelog4j
Steve Kuo
Steve Kuo

Reputation: 63054

Specify time zone of log4j's date

Is it possible to specify the time zone that log4j will use? I need the dates in the log file to be a different time zone than the application's. log4j's PatternLayout uses SimpleDateFormat. Unfortunately there doesn't appear to be a way to control SimpleDateFormat's time zone via the pattern string (DateFormat has setTimeZone method but that doesn't help).

I looked at log4j's source and SimpleDateFormat is being instiantiated in PatternParser.finalizeConverter. Unfortunately there's not an easy way to get a hold of the DateFormat to set the time zone.

Upvotes: 14

Views: 28894

Answers (6)

Joshua S
Joshua S

Reputation: 320

Just append the timezone surrounded by curly braces to %d in your date pattern.

E.g. %d{DEFAULT}{America/New_York} instead of %d{DEFAULT}

(In log4j 2 you can use regular PatternLayout. In log4j 1 since 1.2.16, EnhancedPatternLayout is included and recommended.)

Upvotes: 0

B5A7
B5A7

Reputation: 915

It is preferable to use something like {America/New_York} rather than {GMT-5} because by specifying a timezone an automatic adjustment will be made if daylight savings is operational. Specifying something like GMT-5 will simply adjust the GMT time zone by the specified amount of hours.

Upvotes: 3

avallone
avallone

Reputation: 11

Also if you whant to dinamicaly obtein the default time zone, you can extend EnhancedPatternLayout and overwrite the method "setConversionPattern" like this:

@Override
public void setConversionPattern(String conversionPattern) {
    String defaultTimeZoneId = TimeZone.getDefault().getID();
    String conversionPatternModif = conversionPattern.replaceAll(
        "\\%d\\{([^\\{\\}]*)\\}([ ]*[^\\{]*)", 
        "%d{$1}{"+defaultTimeZoneId+"}$2");

    super.setConversionPattern(conversionPatternModif);
}

Upvotes: 1

10bosal
10bosal

Reputation: 101

My Case... must change the patternLayout to EnhancedPatternLayout. (log4j-1.2.17.jar)

log4j.appender.logfile.layout=org.apache.log4j.EnhancedPatternLayout log4j.appender.logfile.layout.ConversionPattern=[%d{ISO8601}{GMT+9}]%-5p - %m%n

Upvotes: 10

Ivan Digital
Ivan Digital

Reputation: 41

The log pattern above has right idea but not fully correct (you don't get any timestamp in log).
Use this pattern for sure:
%d{ISO8601}{America/New_York} %p [%c] - %m%n
or
%d{ISO8601}{GMT-5} %p [%c] - %m%n

Upvotes: 4

khill
khill

Reputation: 577

If you use the Log4J extras JAR file on your classpath, the EnhancedPatternLayout class supports this configuration option. See the Javadoc at this link. It's handled as part of the %d pattern component like this:

log4j.appender.stdout.layout.ConversionPattern=%d{}{America/New_York} %p [%c] - %m%n

You can download the extras package here.

Upvotes: 18

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