LogBox Appenders - Submit your own appenders

LogBox , Tips & Tricks , Tutorials Add comments
By: Luis Majano

As you have probably read a few days ago we released LogBox: An enterprise ColdFusion Logging Library, part of the new ColdBox 3.0.0 Platform Suite.   The library's core of logging takes place thanks to its appenders that send messages to different destinations.  As of now, the distribution has 11 appenders included, but if you want to build your own, you can very very easily.  Not only that, since we are in Beta, you can submit your appenders and we will include them in the distribution if they are cool!  So here is a little tip and trick on building appenders:

Appender

An appender is an object that LogBox uses in order to log statements to a destination repository. All appenders act as destinations that can be from databases, JMS, Twitter, files, consoles, sockets, etc. Their job is to take the logged message and store it or send it somewhere. LogBox comes bundled with the following appenders that can be found in the package coldbox.system.logging.appenders:

Appender Description
AsyncFileAppender An Asynchronous file appender
AsyncRollingFileAppender An Asynchronous file appender that can do file rotation and archiving
CFAppender Will deliver messages to the coldfusion logs
ConsoleAppender Will deliver messages to the console via system.out
DBAppender Will deliver messages to a database table. It can even auto create the table for you.
EmailAppender Will deliver messages to any email address
FileAppender Will deliver messages a file
RollingFileAppender A file appender that can do file rotation and archiving
ScopeAppender Will deliver messages to any ColdFusion scope you desire
SocketAppender Will connect to any server socket and deliver messages
TwitterAppender Can either send direct messages to a twitter user or update a status of a twitter user.

 

You can define 1 or all of these appenders in LogBox at any point in time. You can even register as many instances of any appender by just naming them differently. 

 

In order to create your own appenders, you will have to create a cfc that extends coldbox.system.logging.AbstractAppender and implement the following methods:

  • init() : Your constructor
  • logMessage() : The method that is called when a message is received
  • onRegistration() : An interceptor that fires when the appender gets created and initialized. It can be used for preparing the appender for operation.
  • onUnRegistration() : An interceptor that fires when the appender is removed from a logger.

 

So how easy is it, well take a look at this simple console appender.

 

<cfcomponent name="ConsoleAppender"
          extends="coldbox.system.logging.AbstractAppender"
          output="false"
          hint="A simple Console Appender">

   
   <!--- Init --->
   <cffunction name="init" access="public" returntype="ConsoleAppender" hint="Constructor" output="false" >
      <!--- ************************************************************* --->
      <cfargument name="name"       type="string" required="true" hint="The unique name for this appender."/>
      <cfargument name="properties"    type="struct" required="false" default="#structnew()#" hint="A map of configuration properties for the appender"/>
      <!--- ************************************************************* --->
      <cfscript>
         // Init supertype
         super.init(argumentCollection=arguments);
         
         instance.out = createObject("java","java.lang.System").out;
                  
         return this;
      </cfscript>
   </cffunction>   
   
   <!--- Log Message --->
   <cffunction name="logMessage" access="public" output="false" returntype="void" hint="Write an entry into the appender.">
      <!--- ************************************************************* --->
      <cfargument name="logEvent" type="coldbox.system.logging.LogEvent" required="true" hint="The logging event"/>
      <!--- ************************************************************* --->
      <cfscript>
         var loge = arguments.logEvent;
         var entry = "";
         
         if( hasCustomLayout() ){
            entry = getCustomLayout().format(loge);
         }
         else{
            entry = "#severityToString(loge.getseverity())# #loge.getCategory()# #loge.getmessage()# ExtraInfo: #loge.getextraInfoAsString()#";
         }
         
         // Log message
         instance.out.println(entry);
      </cfscript>         
   </cffunction>
   
<!------------------------------------------- PRIVATE ------------------------------------------>
   
   
</cfcomponent>

2 responses to “LogBox Appenders - Submit your own appenders”

  1. Will B. Says:
    Does this use an interface? Heh.

    - WB
  2. Luis Majano Says:
    Heh!! Acutally it is an abstract class as functionality needed to be passed down and also, needed to be cf7 compatible (YUCK!!)

    Adobe, please discountinue support for cf7

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