Log4J logging

Introduction

Colored Trails uses Apache log4J as a default logging mechanism. A short log4J manual can be found here.

In the Colored Trails code the log4J configuration file is located in

lib/conf/log4j.properties

Logging to stdout (standard output)

In Colored Trails Log4J is configured to log all log statements (debug and lower) to stdout.

Logging to MySQL

Please note that the following instructions only concern the Colored Trails trunk

You may want to log your server output to a database. Log4J supports a JDBC Appender to log to a MySQL database. You can activate the JDBC Appender for the Colored Trails project by simply some uncommenting a few lines in the log4j.properties file.

In order to create a database and a table for the JDBC Appender to log to, use the SQL commands below.

CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS db_name
where db_name is the name of the database you would like to create.

CREATE TABLE `table_name` (
  `Id` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
  `Logger` varchar(64) default NULL,
  `Priority` varchar(10) default NULL,
  `Message` varchar(250) default NULL,
  `Date` varchar(40) default NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY  (`Id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=1005 DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8

An example

Every Java class in the CT code can use the log4J mechanism. An example:

import org.apache.log4j.Logger;

Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(this.getClass().getName());

logger.debug("Example log statement");