I actually haven’t looked at log4net, but since it predates Log4j 2 I would imagine it is missing the new features we added.
Using your own custom messages is certainly a viable approach. But there again, logging Message objects instead of simple strings is something that was introduced by Log4j 2. As far as I know no other logging framework supports that. But it would definitely give you the flexibility you are looking for. You could create your own API to create various Business Messages and then create a Filter (or Filters) for them. In addition this gives you some control over how the messages are formatted, both through the getFormattedMessage method and by using a custom Layout. The EventLogger is a pretty simple class and can be used if you only want to distinguish a single kind of event. But it does provide a good example for you to follow if you want to do something similar for your business events - you could create separate methods for each type of event and use a different maker and or message type for each. The EventLogger is essentially a global logger, so using it from a class that has its own logger doesn’t really feel all that unnatural when you are logging “normal” debug or info messages through a class logger and logging your business events through the EventLogger (or similar). Ralph > On Sep 16, 2015, at 2:34 PM, Nicholas Duane <nic...@msn.com> wrote: > > I was hoping on getting some replies to my last message as I'm trying to > figure out the best way to utilize the existing logging frameworks, log4j(2) > and log4net in our case, to log our business events and ensure the business > events flow to the correct destination. > > I think the two main suggestions were to either use markers or a separate > "well known" logger. > > As I mentioned in the previous message, I was about to write a sample which > used markers just to better understand how they work. The first road block I > ran into is that log4net does not support markers, as far as I can tell. Now > the implementation doesn't have to be the same on both windows and linux, but > that would certainly be a plus if it was. Also, it doesn't look like markers > have been heavily adopted by many logging frameworks. The one article I read > only listed log4j2 and logback. > > In addition, while markers seem like they would be better at indicating the > type or category of event as opposed to using a level, you still have to > define a marker for each type I guess. I could either define a custom level > or a custom marker. Since markers are not available in log4net and custom > levels are, a custom level might work out better for us. > > Using a "well known" logger to log business events seems like a reasonable > approach. And while I don't see any major downsides with going this route, > it seems that a piece of code which is logging using their own logger should > be able to log a business event with that same logger. It was stated > previously that the level indicates the importance of the event and the > logger indicates the types of events, or why someone might want to look at > the events. The example given was some market data code which used its own > logger to log market data information. That seems totally reasonable, > however, it doesn't seem to fit my example. In our case any component can > emit a business event. > > I then thought that maybe I could use the EventLogger, which I think someone > might have mentioned along the way. I was hoping to try that out also, > assuming that allowed me to pass a marker in whatever methods it exposed. > However, I only see a static marker property on the EventLogger class. > > The other option which I'm considering is exposing a property on my event > object which indicates the category of event. At the moment I have a "type" > property which, of course, indicates the event type. However, this will be > different for every different business event and thus I need another property > which tells me that the event is a "business" event. Then I was thinking I > could write a filter which checks the message object to see if it's one of my > events and if so use the "category" to forward to the appropriate destination. > > Am I missing any other viable solutions? > > Thanks, > Nick > >> From: nic...@msn.com >> To: log4j-user@logging.apache.org >> Subject: markers >> Date: Tue, 15 Sep 2015 22:25:37 -0400 >> >> >> >> >> I was about to starting writing a sample to see how markers work and to see >> if they could be used for logging business events instead of using a custom >> level. While I might have mentioned log4net in passing, we're trying to >> capture these business events using existing logging frameworks. The >> thinking is that we'd use log4net on windows and log4j(2) on linux (no >> facade). Ideally the design would be similar across both platforms. That >> being said, I'm surprised at how different log4net is from log4j(2). It >> appears log4net doesn't support markers. While we don't have to have the >> same solution for both platforms, it would be nice if the solutions were the >> same or similar. >> >> I also looked at the EventLogger and that class doesn't have any overloads >> which take a marker, just a static marker property. I guess the EventLogger >> can be assigned only a single marker? >> >> Thanks, >> Nick >> >> >> >> > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: log4j-user-unsubscr...@logging.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: log4j-user-h...@logging.apache.org
