[LOG4J2-649] Close a dynamically created appender

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 2.0-rc1
• Fix Version/s: 2.5
• Component/s: API, Appenders

Environment

Windows 7 (64-bit)

• Assignee: Ralph Goers
• Reporter: Andrew Rose
• Created: 23/May/14 13:06
• Updated: 27/Sep/16 23:19
• Resolved: 27/Nov/15 06:00

Description

I'm using the Routing functionality in Log4j 2 to dynamically create appenders at runtime. When I know that those appenders are finished with, I'd like to tell Log4j so that it can tidy up the related resources (flush & close files, free its internal objects related to those appenders, etc.). Without doing this, Log4j still has open file handles and I'm unable to manipulate the files that it has written (from an external process which post-processes and archives the logs).

Remko Popma tells me (via the stackoverflow answer at http://stackoverflow.com/a/23827382/799399) that there is no way of doing this at the moment. I'd like to request that you consider enhancing Log4j 2 in this way.

I enclose my configuration below, in case it's relevant (but I think all the details you need are included in the above description).

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Configuration status="WARN">
  <Appenders>

    <Console name="Console" target="SYSTEM_OUT">
      <PatternLayout pattern="%d{HH:mm:ss.SSS} %level{ERROR=!, WARN=?, INFO=-, DEBUG=., TRACE=.} %msg%n"/>
    </Console>

    <Routing name="MatchLogs">
      <Routes pattern="$${ctx:matchID}">
        <Route>
          <RandomAccessFile name="MatchLog-${ctx:matchID}" fileName="logs/${ctx:matchID}.log">
            <PatternLayout pattern="%d{ISO8601} %-5level %-30.30logger{1} %msg%n"/>
          </RandomAccessFile>
        </Route>
      </Routes>
    </Routing>
    <Async name="AsyncWrapper">
      <AppenderRef ref="MatchLogs" level="debug"/>
      <AppenderRef ref="Console" level = "info"/>
    </Async>

    <Routing name="MatchStatsLogs">
      <Routes pattern="$${ctx:matchID}">
        <Route>
          <RandomAccessFile name="MatchStatsLog-${ctx:matchID}" fileName="logs/${ctx:matchID}_stats.log">
            <PatternLayout pattern="%msg"/>
          </RandomAccessFile>
        </Route>
      </Routes>
    </Routing>
    <Async name="AsyncStatsWrapper">
      <AppenderRef ref="MatchStatsLogs" level="debug"/>
    </Async>

  </Appenders>


  <Loggers>
    <Logger name="stats" level="trace" additivity="false">
      <AppenderRef ref="AsyncStatsWrapper"/>
    </Logger>
    <Root level="debug">
      <AppenderRef ref="AsyncWrapper"/>
    </Root>
  </Loggers>
</Configuration>

Issue Links

• is duplicated by: LOG4J2-510 How to close inactive log files