kiln-java-adaptor

You can find more information on Kiln, the open source platform for log aggregation, visualization and analysis, on its GitHub page.

Log4J Appender

If you are using Maven with Java or another JVM based languange, you can add a dependency to the Kiln adapter to your application, and usually through a simple configuration line push log events to your Kiln instance.

The project information and source code for the Log4J adaptor is currently available the Project Page on GitHub. Feel free to check it out, contribute or report bugs.

Maven

pom.xml

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.nevermindsoft</groupId>
    <artifactId>kiln-adaptor-java</artifactId>
    <version>1.8</version>
</dependency>

Java

log4j.properties

log4j.rootLogger=INFO, kiln, stdout

log4j.appender.kiln=com.nevermindsoft.kiln.log4j.RemoteServiceAppender
log4j.appender.kiln.moduleName=Internal Testing
log4j.appender.kiln.apiKey=TEST-API-KEY
log4j.appender.kiln.environmentName=Test
log4j.appender.kiln.serverUrl=http://localhost:4444/api/events/publish
log4j.appender.kiln.maxRequestItems=200
log4j.appender.kiln.sleepTime=2000
log4j.appender.kiln.platform=JUnit
log4j.appender.kiln.maxQueueSize=1000
log4j.appender.kiln.maxStackTraceSize=2000

# Direct log messages to stdout
log4j.appender.stdout=org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender
log4j.appender.stdout.Target=System.out
log4j.appender.stdout.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.stdout.layout.ConversionPattern=%d{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss} %-5p %c{1}:%L - %m%n

Grails

BuildConfig.groovy

dependencies {
    runtime 'com.nevermindsoft:kiln-adaptor-java:1.10'
    ....
}

Config.groovy

log4j = {
    appenders {
        ....
        appender    new com.nevermindsoft.kiln.log4j.RemoteServiceAppender(
                name:              "remote",
                moduleName:        "My Module Name",
                apiKey:            "get-key-from-kiln",
                environmentName:   grails.util.Environment.current.getName(),
                serverUrl:         "http://my.url/api/events/publish",
                maxRequestItems:   200,
                sleepTime:         5000,
                platform:          "grails",
                maxQueueSize:      1000,
                maxStackTraceSize: 2000
        )
    }
 
    ...
 
    root {
        info  'remote'
        ...
    }
}

Configuration Options

• name - specifies the name for this appender. You will use this name as a reference in your log configuration file to specify which messages are to be logged.
• moduleName - specifies the name of the module we are using to produce messages. This may be removed on a future version.
• apiKey - the api key configured on your Kiln service. The application name will be automatically deducted from this api key.
• environmentName - you can specify your environment for more finely grained Kiln filtering. Typical values are production, staging, test, environment, but the value of this property can be any string.
• serverUrl - the url for your publish operation on your kiln service. This will typically be on the format http://[your domain or ip]/api/events/publish unless modified on the server source code.
• maxRequestItems - the maximum number of events to send on a single request. Used for throttling and to avoid server overload and failure due to very large requests.
• sleepTime - the time between requests in milliseconds. The appender will keep an internal queue of events and send them out to the server at the given interval.
• internalLogger - the instance of a KilnInternalLogger to be used for internal logging. The default is to use a com.nevermindsoft.kiln.internal.log.KilnConsoleLogger( Level.WARN ). See documentation for more options.
• internalLoggerClassName - the name of the class to be used for internal logging. This is an alternate way to specify the internal logger. Using the internalLogger property should be used instead whenever possible.
• platform - the platform name to report to the kiln server. This is used for reporting purposes. If not specified, this will default to 'Java'.
• maxQueueSize - this is the size of the appender's internal queue. The appender will start rejecting events after a queue reaches this size. The default value for this is 1000.
• maxStackTraceSize - this is the max size of stack traces to avoid sending very large requests to the server. The default value for this is unlimited.

Changelog

• 1.11
  • Adding support for SLF4J
  • Adding unit tests
  • Improving memory utilization
    • Adding support to configure queue size
    • Adding support to configure maximum size for stack trace
    • Making more efficient use of internal memory utilization
• 1.10
  • Refactoring appender configuration into its own class
  • Adding support for specifying a platform (Java,Grails,...) with a default value of Java
  • Adding support for environment metadata and automatically adding following properties:
    • Java Version
• 1.9
  • Adding an option to specify the internal logger to use
  • Adding option to indicate how the source reference should be represented on the generated json to allow using the appender across frameworks
  • Using Apache HttpClient instead of java.net.URL to publish requests
  • Adding support for SSL connections
• 1.8 (released)
  • Fixed a bug with the json generated by the appender when stack traces or source were present
• 1.7 (released)
  • Fixed bug causing stack traces to be populated with the string "null"