Logging a web service

Question

Hi folks,
i'm trying to incorporate logging into my web service development environment but cant seem to get it to work. I'm using AXIS RC1.2 and tomcat 4.
I have put a log4j.properties file into C:\Program Files\Apache\jakarta-tomcat-4.1.31\webapps\axis\WEB-INF\classes and remove the one in axis.jar. This is what it looks like:
# Log4j configuration file.
# Set root logger level to DEBUG and its only appender to A.
log4j.rootCategory=DEBUG, A
# A is a DailyRollingFileAppender
log4j.appender.A=org.apache.log4j.DailyRollingFileAppender
log4j.appender.A.file=C:\Program Files\Apache\jakarta-tomcat-4.1.31\logs\Axis.log
log4j.appender.A.datePattern='.'yyyy-MM-dd
log4j.appender.A.append=true
log4j.appender.A.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.A.layout.ConversionPattern=%-5p %d{ISO8601} [%t] - %m%n...from here I have to import log4j classes and declare a variable in the class I want to log like this
public class DOMGetFlightsXMLImpl implements GetFlightsXMLIF{
      //logger
     static Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(DOMGetFlightsXMLImpl.class);
      private Document doc;
      private Element root;...and I should be able to log with simple logger.debug(" debug message"); right? But sofar there's nothing like C:\Program Files\Apache\jakarta-tomcat-4.1.31\logs\Axis.log

Answer 1

I had problems with log4j too.
OK, one thing you haven't done is set the priority for whatever category your logger is in. With XML-based log4j configuration, I do this with:
  <category name="org.jacksonwest">
    <priority value="DEBUG"/>
  </category>...and all my classes are under 'org.jacksonwest'. I'm pretty sure this is necessary. I don't know how to do it with the properties-style config file - the XML one is way better I reckon :)
What you could also do is turn on debug info for log4j initialisation by passing the option "-Dlog4j.debug" to Tomcat. This tells you what appenders, categories etc log4j is creating.
I've put my full log4j config down below in case that helps.
-Tim
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE log4j:configuration SYSTEM "log4j.dtd">
<log4j:configuration debug="true">
  <appender name="CONSOLE" class="org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender">
    <param name="Target" value="System.out"/>
    <param name="Threshold" value="DEBUG"/>
    <layout class="org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout">
      <!-- <param name="ConversionPattern" value="%d{ABSOLUTE} %-5p [%c{1}] %m%n"/> -->
      <param name="ConversionPattern" value="THPSERVER  : %5L %-20C{1}:%20M : %m%n"/>
    </layout>
  </appender>
  <category name="org.jacksonwest">
    <priority value="DEBUG"/>
  </category>
  <root>   
    <level value="DEBUG"/>
    <appender-ref ref="CONSOLE"/>
  </root>
</log4j:configuration>