How to roll the log file on startup in logback

Question

Hi all,

I would like to configure logback to do the following.

• Log to a file
• Roll the file when it reaches 50MB
• Only keep 7 days worth of logs
• On startup always generate a new file (do a roll)

I have it all working except for the last item, startup roll. Does anyone know how to achieve that? Here's the config...

  <appender name="File" class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.RollingFileAppender">

    <layout class="ch.qos.logback.classic.PatternLayout">
      <Pattern>%d{HH:mm:ss.SSS} [%thread] %-5level %logger{36} - %msg \(%file:%line\)%n</Pattern>
    </layout>

    <File>server.log</File>

    <rollingPolicy class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.TimeBasedRollingPolicy">
      <FileNamePattern>server.%d{yyyy-MM-dd}.log</FileNamePattern>
      <!-- keep 7 days' worth of history -->
      <MaxHistory>7</MaxHistory>

      <TimeBasedFileNamingAndTriggeringPolicy class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.SizeAndTimeBasedFNATP">
        <MaxFileSize>50MB</MaxFileSize>
      </TimeBasedFileNamingAndTriggeringPolicy>

    </rollingPolicy>
  </appender>

Answer 1

Create your own subclass of ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.TimeBasedRollingPolicy and override its start

public class MyPolicy
    extends ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.TimeBasedRollingPolicy
{

    public void start ( )
    {
        super.start( );
        rollover( );
    }
}

Answer 2

Overriding the isTriggeringEvent() method in ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.SizeAndTimeBasedFNATP should work nicely. Just return 'true' the first time isTriggeringEvent() method is called.

Answer 3

Ceki's solution doesn't appear to work for me, but seems to be part way there at least.

It blows up because it can't see the rolling policy when starting the TimeBasedFileNamingAndTriggeringPolicyBase. With some hackery I got it to do some logging, and with some more I got it to observe the trigger, but then it broke again because it couldn't resolve one of the filename properties... The package is a logback one so I could get to some of the internals, to replicate some of the logic in SizeAndTimeBasedFNATP#isTriggeringEvent and call computeCurrentPeriodsHighestCounterValue. I think something along those lines might work, just haven't found the magic combination yet. I really hope I'm doing something silly, because otherwise I think it will mean either opening up some of the details for subclassing, or putting this straight into logback as another rolling/triggering policy.

logback.xml: tried various orderings of triggeringPolicy, TimeBasedFileNamingAndTriggeringPolicy inside and outside the rollingPolicy.

<appender name="FILE" class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.RollingFileAppender">
    <file>${LOG_DIR}/${LOG_FILE_BASE}.log</file>
    <rollingPolicy class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.TimeBasedRollingPolicy">
        <fileNamePattern>${LOG_DIR}/${LOG_FILE_BASE}.%d{yyyy-MM-dd}.%i.log</fileNamePattern>
        <MaxHistory>7</MaxHistory>

        <TimeBasedFileNamingAndTriggeringPolicy class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.RollOnStartupPolicy" />
    </rollingPolicy>

    <filter class="ch.qos.logback.classic.filter.ThresholdFilter">
        <level>INFO</level>
    </filter>

    <encoder>
        <pattern>%msg%n</pattern>
    </encoder>
</appender>

The trigger policy:

package ch.qos.logback.core.rolling;
public class RollOnStartupPolicy<E> extends SizeAndTimeBasedFNATP<E> {
private final AtomicBoolean firstTime = new AtomicBoolean(true);

    @Override
    public boolean isTriggeringEvent(File activeFile, E event) {
        if (!firstTime.get()) { // fast path
            return false;
        }

        if (firstTime.getAndSet(false)) {
            return true;
        }
        return false;
    }
}

The exception:

java.lang.NullPointerException
at  at ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.TimeBasedFileNamingAndTriggeringPolicyBase.start(TimeBasedFileNamingAndTriggeringPolicyBase.java:46)
at  at ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.SizeAndTimeBasedFNATP.start(SizeAndTimeBasedFNATP.java:36)
at  at ch.qos.logback.core.joran... [snip joran config]