Question

I am writing a command line tool that performs a number of tests to our servers and reports an output to screen.

I am currently using log4j to print to screen and to a log file.

However, I was wondering if there was a better technique to manage all the printing from one class instead of having the “print” commands scattered all over my code.

e.g.

logger.info("Connecting to environment: " + envName);

if (cmd.hasOption(OPTION_CHECK_PRIMARY)) {
    //print primary leg
    String primaryLegName = env.getPrimaryLeg().getLegName();
    String message = "is primary";

    logger.info(String.format("%s : %-4s %s", envName, primaryLegName, message));
}

This is an example of the output that is now scattered across all my code.

Would it be best to have a Formatter class that handles all the printing?

What is the best approach to create it?

What do you think about something like:

Formatter pf = new PlainFormatter();
...
pf.printEnvironment(envName);

if (cmd.hasOption(OPTION_CHECK_PRIMARY)) {
    //print primary leg
    String primaryLegName = env.getPrimaryLeg().getLegName();
    pf.printPrimary(envName, primaryLegName); 
}

Answer 1

Have you tried using log4j.properties to format the text. I think if you are trying to format uniquely for each class, then this is still possible using log4j.properties.

Here is a simple example of log4j.properties

log4j.rootLogger=INFO, A1
log4j.appender.A1=org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender
log4j.appender.A1.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout

You can use Pattern in properties like so:

log4j.appender.stdout.layout.ConversionPattern=%5p [%t] (%F:%L) - %m%n