Shibboleth Developers

[Walter Hoehn <>]

Developers,

I have added a servlet to each dist target's deployment descriptor that 
reads in a configuration file and initializes a logging package called 
Log4J.  Log4J is nice a couple of ways:

It allows for deciding at runtime whether log messages should be output.
It has a flexible system for configuring what log messages look like.
It has a flexible system for determining the destination of messages.
It's fast.
It's easy to use.

So, I guess my suggestion is that we sort of standardize logging in the 
different shibboleth components and use log4j.  If a couple of you could 
 try it out and comment on whether or not this sounds like a good idea, 
I would be appreciative.

In order to use it, you need to add a static member to your classes.

private static Logger log = Logger.getLogger(LogServ.class.getName());

Replace "LogServ" with the name of the class you are modifying.

Then, you just add messages to the logger by calling one of a couple of 
methods as appropriate. For example:

log.info("Logger initialized.");

You choose which log.* method to call based on the "level" of the 
message you wish to output.  The default levels are "DEBUG", "INFO", 
"ERROR", and "FATAL", each with a respective method in the Logger class. 
 Below i s a breakdown of when you would useeach one.

log.fatal() - An error that will cause the application to abort
log.error() - Ummm... an error :-)
log.warn()  - A potential problem or point of interest
log.info()  - Informational messages, used to chart application flow
log.debug() - detailed status information

That is pretty much all you need to know to get started.

-Walter



--
-------------------------
Walter F. Hoehn, Jr
Systems Programmer
Columbia University - EPIC
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