Specify time zone of log4j's date

Question

Is it possible to specify the time zone that log4j will use? I need the dates in the log file to be a different time zone than the application's. log4j's PatternLayout uses SimpleDateFormat. Unfortunately there doesn't appear to be a way to control SimpleDateFormat's time zone via the pattern string (DateFormat has setTimeZone method but that doesn't help).

I looked at log4j's source and SimpleDateFormat is being instiantiated in PatternParser.finalizeConverter. Unfortunately there's not an easy way to get a hold of the DateFormat to set the time zone.

Answer 1

If you use the Log4J extras JAR file on your classpath, the EnhancedPatternLayout class supports this configuration option. See the Javadoc at this link. It's handled as part of the %d pattern component like this:

log4j.appender.stdout.layout.ConversionPattern=%d{}{America/New_York} %p [%c] - %m%n

You can download the extras package here.