[LOG4J2-2970] Adding String return type of each log method

• Type: New Feature
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Critical
• Resolution: Won't Do
• Affects Version/s: 2.13.3
• Component/s: API
• Labels: API user-experience
• Flags: Important
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Colin Zhang
• Created: 04/Dec/20 04:49
• Updated: 28/Feb/21 08:28
• Resolved: 28/Feb/21 08:28

Description

In many industry systems,  we need to log the error and then throw a new exception with the same message. The logger will populate the message with markers and variables.

But we need to manually populated it by string + again when construct the exception message. This is an anti-pattern.

Please take below snippet as example:

log.error("The number of records is {} which exceed the threshold {}",  num, threshold); 
throw new ValidationException("The number of record is " + num + " which exceed the threshold " + threshold);

 

If the API can return populated message, the code would turn much better:

String error = log.error("The number of records is {} which exceed the threshold {}",  num, threshold);
throw new ValidationException(error);

 

The only concern is that this may only works for synchronous logging, not work for asynchronous way. But I believe it could be resolved.