Create log file with date using log4j

Question

I'm writing my log file using below code but it stores file as QueryLog.log. Am i missing something? Check my code of log4j.properties file

log4j.logger.org.hibernate=INFO
log4j.logger.org.hibernate.SQL=DEBUG
log4j.logger.org.hibernate.type=TRACE
log4j.logger.org.hibernate.hql.ast.AST=info
log4j.logger.org.hibernate.tool.hbm2ddl=warn
log4j.logger.org.hibernate.hql=debug
log4j.logger.org.hibernate.cache=info
log4j.logger.org.hibernate.jdbc=debug
log4j.rootLogger = DEBUG, FILE
log4j.appender.FILE=org.apache.log4j.DailyRollingFileAppender
log4j.appender.FILE.DatePattern='.'yyyy-MM-dd-a
log4j.appender.FILE.File=log4j/QueryLog.log
log4j.appender.FILE.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.FILE.layout.conversionPattern= %d{HH:mm:ss} %-5p %c - %m%n

Links i used:

http://www.tutorialspoint.com/log4j/log4j_logging_files.htm

http://www.codejava.net/coding/configure-log4j-for-creating-daily-rolling-log-files

Answer 1

The solution to log directly to a file with current active date/time such as XYZ.log.20150101.log instead of XYZ.log could be done by simply removing ActiveFileName property when using the rolling package org.apache.log4j.rolling.RollingFileAppender in the apache-log4j-extras 1.1 with log4j 1.2.x.

<appender name="defaultFileAppender" class="org.apache.log4j.rolling.RollingFileAppender">
    <param name="append" value="true" />
    <param name="Threshold" value="INFO" />
    <rollingPolicy class="org.apache.log4j.rolling.TimeBasedRollingPolicy">
        <param name="FileNamePattern"
            value="${catalina.base}/logs/application/custom-application-logger.%d{yyyy-MM-dd_HH_mm}" />
    </rollingPolicy>
    <layout class="org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout">
        <param name="ConversionPattern"
            value="%d{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSS} %-5p %-10t [%-40.40c] %x - %m%n" />
    </layout>
</appender>

Answer 2

This line sets the log file name, in your log4j properties you have: log4j.appender.FILE.File=log4j/QueryLog.log

You can see the answer here Setting a log file name to include current date in Log4j

Answer 3

As is mentioned in this StackOverflow Q&A, the purpose of a RollingFileAppender is to automatically create a new log file at some defined interval. In the case of the DailyRollingFileAppender, that interval is 12:00 AM of each day.

What this means is that the first file created by log4j will have the file name you specified here:

log4j.appender.FILE.File=log4j/QueryLog.log

And, from then forward, each day a new log file will be created with the date appended to it.

To always name the file with the date appended, you could use DatedFileAppender by Geoff Mottram