How to use Logback in Spring boot

In this article, we will use Logback to implement logging functinality in Spring Boot. Let’s get started.

Setup some packages for utilizing logback
Structure of Logback package
Configure Logback with xml file
Some problems when using Logback
Wrapping up

Structure of Logback package

The structure of Logback framework is as same as Log4j 1.x, or Log4j 2.x. It also has same common things:

Logger - a context for log messages. This is the class that applications interact with to create log messages.
Appender - place log messages in which destinations such as console, file. A Logger can have more than one Appender.
Layout - it is used to format our message to display in console or file. Logback supports the creation of custom classes for formatting messages, as well as robust configuration options for the existing ones.

Below is an image that describe the structure of Logback framework.

Setup some packages for utilizing logback

Configuration logback in Spring boot

Spring Boot uses Logback framework as as a default Logger.

In pom.xml file, we have.

  <dependency>
      <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
      <artifactId>spring-boot-starter</artifactId>
  </dependency>

With Gradle, we will add the following statement to the build.gradle file.

  implementation "org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter:${springBootVersion}"

Configuration logback in Spring MVC

  <properties>
      <version.jcloverslf4j>1.7.29</version.jcloverslf4j>
      <version.logback>1.2.3</version.logback>
      <version.springframework>5.1.4.RELEASE</version.springframework>
  </properties>

  <dependencies>
      <dependency>
          <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
          <artifactId>spring-context</artifactId>
          <exclusions>
              <exclusion>
                  <groupId>commons-logging</groupId>
                  <artifactId>commons-logging</artifactId>
              </exclusion>
          </exclusions>
          <version>${version.springframework}</version>
      </dependency>

      <dependency>
          <groupId>ch.qos.logback</groupId>
          <artifactId>logback-classic</artifactId>
          <version>${version.logback}</version>
      </dependency>
      <dependency>
          <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
          <artifactId>jcl-over-slf4j</artifactId>
          <version>${version.jcloverslf4j}</version>
      </dependency>
  </dependencies>

Configuration logback in normal Java project

  <properties>
      <version.slf4j>1.8.0-beta2</version.slf4j>
      <version.logback>1.2.3</version.logback>
  </properties>

  <dependencies>
      <dependency>
          <groupId>ch.qos.logback</groupId>
          <artifactId>logback-core</artifactId>
          <version>${version.logback}</version>
      </dependency>
        
      <dependency>
          <groupId>ch.qos.logback</groupId>
          <artifactId>logback-classic</artifactId>
          <version>${version.logback}</version>
      </dependency>

      <dependency>
          <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
          <artifactId>slf4j-api</artifactId>
          <version>${version.slf4j}</version>
          <scope>test</scope>
      </dependency>
  </dependencies>

Configure Logback with xml file

Configuration in Logback

Before going straight forward to configure logback.xml file, we need to understand why we do it, and the other ways to configure Logback.

Logback can be configured either programmatically or with a configuration script expressed in XML or Groovy format. Below are the initialization steps that logback follows to try to configure itself:
- Logback tries to find a file called logback-test.xml in the classpath.
- If no such file is found, logback tries to find a file called logback.groovy in the classpath.
- If no such file is found, it checks for the file logback.xml in the classpath..
- If no such file is found, service-provider loading facility (introduced in JDK 1.6) is used to resolve the implementation of com.qos.logback.classic.spi.Configurator interface by looking up the file META-INF\services\ch.qos.logback.classic.spi.Configurator in the class path. Its contents should specify the fully qualified class name of the desired Configurator implementation.
- If none of the above succeeds, logback configures itself automatically using the BasicConfigurator which will cause logging output to be directed to the console.
If we are using Maven and if you place the logback-test.xml under the src/test/resources folder, Maven will ensure that it won’t be included in the artifact produced. Thus, you can use a different configuration file, namely logback-test.xml during testing, and another file, namely, logback.xml, in production.
Translate log4j.properties file of Log4j 1.x to logback.xml of Logback

We can go to the website Properties translator to convert log4j.properties to logback.xml.

Content of logback.xml file

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
 <configuration>
     <property name="HOME_LOG_PATH" value="C:/logs"/>
     <property name="PATTERN_CONSOLE" value=".%d{HH:mm:ss.SSS} [%thread] %-5level %logger{36} - %msg %n" />
     <property name="PATTERN_ROLLING_FILE" value="%d %p %c{1.} [%t] %m%n" />
     <property name="PATTERN_FILE" value="%-4relative [%thread] %-5level %logger{35} - %msg%n" />
     <property name="MAX_FILE_SIZE" value="10MB" />
     <property name="MAX_DAY_KEEP" value="60" />
        
     <appender name="consoleAppender" class="ch.qos.logback.core.ConsoleAppender">
         <encoder>
             <Pattern>${PATTERN_CONSOLE}</Pattern>
         </encoder>
         <filter class="ch.qos.logback.classic.filter.ThresholdFilter">
             <level>TRACE</level>
         </filter>
     </appender>

     <appender name="FILE" class="ch.qos.logback.core.FileAppender">
         <file>${HOME_LOG_PATH}/app.log</file>
         <append>true</append>
         <encoder>
             <pattern>${PATTERN_FILE}</pattern>
         </encoder>
     </appender>

     <appender name="fileRollingAppender" class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.RollingFileAppender">
         <file>${HOME_LOG_PATH}/app.log</file>

         <rollingPolicy class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.SizeAndTimeBasedRollingPolicy">
             <fileNamePattern>${HOME_LOG_PATH}/app.%d{yyyy-MM-dd_HH-mm}.%i.log</fileNamePattern>
             <!-- each archived file, size max 10MB -->
             <maxFileSize>${MAX_FILE_SIZE}</maxFileSize>
             <!-- total size of all archive files, if total size > 20GB,
                 it will delete old archived file -->
             <totalSizeCap>20GB</totalSizeCap>
             <!-- 60 days to keep -->
             <maxHistory>${MAX_DAY_KEEP}</maxHistory>
         </rollingPolicy>

         <encoder>
             <pattern>${PATTERN_ROLLING_FILE}</pattern>
         </encoder>
     </appender>

     <logger name="com.manhpd" level="debug" additivity="false">
         <appender-ref ref="consoleAppender" />
         <appender-ref ref="fileRollingAppender" />
     </logger>

     <root level="info">
         <appender-ref ref="consoleAppender" />
         <appender-ref ref="fileRollingAppender" />
     </root>
 </configuration>

How to use Logback

 import org.slf4j.Logger;
 import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;

 public class Application {
        
     private static final Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(HelloController.class);

     // ...

 }

Symbols in pattern
- %d{HH:mm:ss.SSS} - a timestamp with hours, minutes, seconds and milliseconds
- [%thread] - the level of the logging event, padded to 5 characters
- %-5level – the level of the logging event, padded to 5 characters
- %logger{36} – the name of the logger, truncated to 35 characters
- %msg%n – the log messages followed by the platform dependent line separator character

Some problems when using Logback

In multi-module project, for some reason, Logback is only logging from the the “main module” where the Spring application is.

This main module is actually the also the module which is packaged as WAR which contains the rest of the modules.

Solution:
- Because both commons-logging and jcl-over-slf4j are on the classpath together. Excluding commons-logging from the classpath often helps.
- So, in parent module, we can configure it as same as configuration in Setup some packages for utilizing logback.
- logback.xml file should present in main module that is used to package into jar or war file.