Question

i am using log4j as my logging library, and i want the generated log file to be inside my web application, so following are the jars i am using:

    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
        <artifactId>slf4j-api</artifactId>
        <version>1.6.4</version>
    </dependency>


    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
        <artifactId>slf4j-log4j12</artifactId>
        <version>1.6.4</version>
    </dependency>

and following are log4j configuration:

log4j.rootLogger=DEBUG, stdout, R

log4j.appender.stdout=org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender
log4j.appender.stdout.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout

# Pattern to output the caller's file name and line number.
log4j.appender.stdout.layout.ConversionPattern=%5p [%t] (%F:%L) - %m%n

log4j.appender.R=org.apache.log4j.RollingFileAppender
log4j.appender.R.File=mylog.log

log4j.appender.R.MaxFileSize=10000KB

log4j.appender.R.MaxBackupIndex=3

log4j.appender.R.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.R.layout.ConversionPattern=%p %t %c - %m%n

# Control/Limit integrated frameworks logging messages
log4j.logger.org.springframework=ERROR

Problem: when i use file system path like log4j.appender.R.File=${user.home}/mylog.log
the file is created successfully with no problems, but when trying to use a relative path like: log4j.appender.R.File=mylog.log the file is not created.

please advise how to fix that.

Answer 1

Since you mentioned a web application the current working directory would be the web container root -like TOMCAT_HOME. So the log file path will be relative to your web container and not your web-application.

Also most web-containers restrict writing files into the web application directories. There might be some configurations to do that – not sure.