CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javalogginglog4j2
Kyle Rush
Kyle Rush

Reputation: 153

Change Log4J2 Output File During Runtime

I'm trying to integrate Log4J2 with a bit of custom logging functionality in a project of mine and running into some issues getting Log4J2 to behave similarly to my own implementation. I'd like to be able to change the log file being written to (make if doesn't exist, cease writing to old file, only write to new file) based on events that occur in execution.

I'll give an example that hopefully illustrates what I'm looking for. We start the application and write to some predetermined log file name but we're just recording preliminary logs because nothing of interest has really happened yet. Once environmental conditions are correct and we've received user input the software is engaged and we'd like to begin logging for both debugging information and data capture. To separate the preliminary data from the interesting data we'd like to change our log file to a new log file who's name contains more information about the state of the environment when the system was engaged, to make it easier to sort through which log files we want to analyze and post-process.

I've seen posts on how to accomplish similar things, but they seem to either require the new filename to be known before Log4J2 is initialized (i.e. setting a system property) or using a RoutingAppender which seems to be closer but appears to require knowing all possible values (to define the routes) that we might want to put in our file name. We'd have to define one route per each environment state (or worse yet, each state combination) we want to put in the file name.

Any ideas?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 885

Answers (1)

Remko Popma
Remko Popma

Reputation: 36754

You use the RoutingAppender to dynamically create new files based on a ThreadContext key/value.

Here is an example of how to do this: https://logging.apache.org/log4j/2.x/faq.html#separate_log_files

In the example, the value of ROUTINGKEY in the ThreadContext map determines the new file name.

Upvotes: 1

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