How do I retrieve the name of the lowest subclass from the context of the superclass in Java?

Question

Rational

I would like to have more detailed logging debugging/logging output on a few superclasses, so the subclass name will not actually be effecting real-time performance nor application logic. I'm also of the opinion that it is fairly bad design to do this normally, however I really do want this info to be logged during development runs.

Question

Suppose I have a simple class structure as below, how do I pull the name of the subclass into the superclass without having to explicitly pass a reference?

public abstract AbstractClass {
    private Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(getClass());

    public AbstractClass() {}

    public void execute(ContextObject context) {
        if (logger.debuggingEnabled()) {
            String invokingClassName = ""; // <-- how do I get this?
            logger.debug("Executing {}", invokingClassName);
        }
        // shared application logic is here...
    }
}

public MyClass extends AbstractClass {
    public MyClass() {}

    @Override
    public void execute(ContextObject context) {
        super.execute(context);
        // application logic...
    }
}

I have worked with parsing stack traces before and I suspect that is the route I will have to go if I want this information. Does anyone know of a library that will do this for me or a good code snippet?

Answer 1

Doesn't this.getClass().getName() do the trick? Namely:

public void execute(ContextObject context) {
    if (logger.debuggingEnabled()) {
        String invokingClassName = ""; // <-- how do I get this?
        logger.debug("Executing {}", this.getClass().getName());
    }
    // shared application logic is here...
}

Answer 2

Why do you want to log the class name explicitly. Log4j already do that. The way you have defined your Logger will do the trick. Check your log file.

Answer 3

You've already got that information when you execute this line:

private Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(getClass());

That means you'll be logging with a category for the actual class. As that information is in the log already, I don't think it makes much sense to also include it in the execute method. Just make sure that your log output format includes the category name and it should be fine.