Log4J - reading properties file from /WEB-INF directory issue..

Question

I'm just learning to implement Log4J; the approach I am taking for my JSF application running under Tomcat 5.5x is to create an initialization servlet to initialize the logger, and then access the logger instance within my backing beans and application module services. I include log4j.jar file in /WEB-INF/lib and log4j.properties in /WEB-INF.
First I wanted to see if this was a good approach, and secondly I'm having trouble accessing the log4j.properties file from the /WEB-INF directory (see below) - any suggestions on how to set up the path so that the properties file can be found (I receive a java.io.filenotfoundexception)?
Where I'm looking for direction is how to define a single instance of the logger and then access that instance from my java classes versus re-creating the logger in each class.
----- web.xml --------
<servlet>
<servlet-name>LogServlet</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>com.sidehire.view.util.LogServlet</servlet-class>
<init-param>
<param-name>setup</param-name>
<param-value>/WEB-INF/log4j.properties</param-value>
</init-param>
<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
------ LogServlet class ------
public void init()
throws ServletException {
String config = getInitParameter("setup");
PropertyConfigurator.configure(config);
Thanks
Message was edited by:
javaX

Answer 1

Try to put the log4j.properties in your WEB-INF/classes/ directory.
You could wrap one log4j instance in a static method in a utility class, but then you would probably lose other information depending on your logger configuration.
If you create an instance in each class, which after all is just one line like this:
static Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(ChangePasswrdAction.class.getName());
then you are able to get time and method information.