Configuring Log4j within a Portal WAR

Question

I'm having difficulty setting up log4j through commons-logging within my portal WAR project.
I've put commons-logging.jar, and log4j.jar in my WEB-INF/lib directory and made sure my log4j.properties file is in the classpath. However, when I run the application, the logging occurs based on the settings defined in the Admin Console. Regardless of what I have defined in the log4j.properties file, the server seems to take priority.
Can this be changed? If so, how?
Thanks,
Dan

Answer 1

Dan,
I had a similar problem because I wanted to define my own log4j config regardless of what other portal apps were deployed in the BEA domain or what log4j was the default for the domain. This is what I do:
1) Put your log4j config file in the WEB-INF classes dir (or I guess it could be in some other place that the CLASSPATH knows of)
2) Create a servlet that looks like:
import javax.servlet.*;
import javax.servlet.http.*;
import org.apache.log4j.xml.*;
public class Log4jInitServlet extends HttpServlet {
private static final long serialVersionUID = 23456;
public void init(ServletConfig config) throws ServletException {
super.init(config);
DOMConfigurator.configure(Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader().getResource("myLog4jConfigFile.xml"));
public void doGet(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse resp) {
3) Add the servlet definition in the web.xml and add a <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
That should do it.
- Peter