Grails logging from controller - grails

Question

I'm having a hard time to get Grails 2.4.5 to log my custom messages from my controllers into a specific file. This is what I have in the config part:
log4j = {
/*
* Log levels
off
fatal
error
warn
info
debug
trace
all
*/
appenders {
console name:'stdout', threshold: org.apache.log4j.Level.INFO
rollingFile name: 'applog', maxFileSize: 1024, file: (System.getProperty('catalina.base') ?: 'target') + '/logs/' + appName + '.log',
layout: pattern(conversionPattern: "[%d{HH:mm:ss:SSS}] %-5p %c{2}: %m%n")
environments {
development {
rollingFile name: 'grailsfile', maxFileSize: 4096, file: 'target/logs/grails.log'
file name: 'rootlog', file: 'target/logs/root.log'
}
}
}
root { error 'stdout'}
environments {
development {
debug additivity: false, 'grails.app'
root { error 'stdout', 'rootlog'} //override the root
warn additivity: false, grailsfile:
['org.codehaus.groovy.grails.web.servlet', // controllers
'org.codehaus.groovy.grails.web.pages', // GSP
'org.codehaus.groovy.grails.web.sitemesh', // layouts
'org.codehaus.groovy.grails.web.mapping.filter', // URL mapping
'org.codehaus.groovy.grails.web.mapping', // URL mapping
'org.codehaus.groovy.grails.commons', // core / classloading
'org.codehaus.groovy.grails.plugins', // plugins
'org.codehaus.groovy.grails.orm.hibernate', // hibernate integration
'org.springframework',
'org.hibernate',
'net.sf.ehcache.hibernate']
debug additivity: false, applog:
['grails.app.controllers', 'grails.app.domain', 'grails.app.services']
}
// production {
// root { error() }
// warn "grails.app.controllers"
// warn "grails.app.domain"
// warn "grails.app.services"
// warn additivity: false, applog: 'grails.app'
// }
}
}
in the controller:
println "Debug log enabled?: " + log.debugEnabled
log.debug "First piggy wrote to Debug"
log.info "Second piggy wrote to Info"
log.error "And the third piggy wrote to Error"
That shows me "Debug log enabled?: true" on console. But the message are not logged anywhere.
The Grails internals log to "grailsfile" and also errors go to "rootlog". But appName.log stays empty.
Any hint what I am having wrong?
UPDATE
To simplify my request I have only configured the most important now. I want the lines
log.debug "First piggy wrote to Debug"
log.info "Second piggy wrote to Info"
log.error "And the third piggy wrote to Error"
End up in the appender applog (file)
So the log4j now only has:
log4j = {
appenders {
console name:'stdout'//, threshold: org.apache.log4j.Level.INFO
rollingFile name: 'applog', maxFileSize: 1024, file: (System.getProperty('catalina.base') ?: 'target') + '/logs/' + appName + '.log',
layout: pattern(conversionPattern: "[%d{HH:mm:ss:SSS}] %-5p %c{2}: %m%n")
}
environments {
development {
debug 'grails.app'
debug additivity: false
applog: ['grails.app.controllers', 'grails.app.domain', 'grails.app.services']
}
}
}
But Still I get my log lines (and also errors from other sources) into console while my custom log file stays empty.
So I simply want to get (ONLY) my log lines into the applog appender as a first step. Any hint how to achieve this?

Answer 1

If you are running the app in development mode, then all your logs with error level and higher are going to target/logs/root.log
It is configured here:
file name: 'rootlog', file: 'target/logs/root.log' ...
root { error 'stdout', 'rootlog'} //override the root
That's because development closure overrides your global configuration.
If you want to see all the logs in appName.log, you should set lower logging level and change appender like this:
root { info 'stdout', 'applog'} //override the root

Answer 2

meanwhile I could figure out that this property made the trouble for my custom log messages:
def appName = grails.util.Metadata.current.'app.name'
...
file: (System.getProperty('catalina.base') ?: 'target') + '/logs/' + appName + '.log',
changing to this works:
log4jFileName = (System.properties.'catalina.base') + "/logs/${appName}.log"
...
file: "${config.log4jFileName}",