Question

Is there a cleaner way for me to write debug level log statements? In some ways one could say that the string literals are basically commenting the code and providing logging in one line and that it is already very clean. But after I add debug level log statements, I find the code much less easier to read up and down. Take this example (I may update to a real example if I get back to my home PC):

int i = 0;
logger.debug("Setting i to 0,"); //Just an example, would show something more complex
i++;

InputStream is = socket.getInputStream();
DataOutputStream dos = new DataOutputStream(socket.getOutputStream());

IOUtils.write(request, dos);
logger.debug("request written to output");

while (!is.read(buffer))
    logger.debug("Reading into buffer");

logger.debug("Data read completely from socket");

CustomObject.doStuff(buffer);
logger.debug("Stuff has been done to buffer");

Answer 1

You could try using aspects, although these have the limitation that you can only put log statements “around” method calls, i.e. before entering and/or after leaving a specific method.

For more detailed logging, I am afraid there is no other way than hand-coded log messages.

I typically strive to remove the not-so-much-needed debug log statements from the code once I made sure that it works the way it should (for which unit tests are a must).