How to integrate application logging errors with JEMH

Owned by Andy Brook [Plugin People] (Unlicensed)
Jan 05, 2016
3 min read

Overview

Log to Email is a pair of log appenders that allow LOG4J or SLF4J logging frameworks to send error or fatal messages to JEMH via an email message.  JEMH can then be configured to create a JIRA issue based on that error or fatal message.

The appenders have the following features:

  • Only messages of the type error and fatal are used, the other messages are ignored

  • An email is sent to JEMH for every logged message

  • Emails are queued up and sent in their own threads

  • As a safety measure if 2 emails are currently in the queue then all new messages will be dumped (until the queue falls below 2 items).  This will reduce the number of emails being sent in case a large number of errors occur

LOG4J

To use the LOG4J features you will need to include the following Maven dependences: log4j.log4j and javax.mail.mail

Configuration

To configure LOG4J you will need to specify the correct appender and the email details in the log4j.properties file.  Below are two examples, one that uses a SSL connection and the other uses a non-SSL connection.  Both examples require you to define the appender shown below.

Root Logger config
log4j.rootLogger=DEBUG, A1,console log4j.appender.console=org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender log4j.appender.console.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout log4j.appender.console.layout.ConversionPattern=%-4r [%t] %-5p %c %x - %m%n

The above sample defines an appender called A1 that reports on error and fatal messages.  Anything below the level of ERROR will be ignored.  The appender for A1 is "com.thepluginpeople.jemhloggingsupport.log4j.Log4JEmailAppender".

SSL
JEMH Email Appender
log4j.appender.A1.Threshold=ERROR log4j.appender.A1.emailSubject=Application X had a problem log4j.appender.A1.applicationName=My Test Application log4j.appender.A1.ssl=true log4j.appender.A1.auth=true log4j.appender.A1.socketClass=javax.net.ssl.SSLSocketFactory log4j.appender.A1.socketPort=465 log4j.appender.A1.port=587 log4j.appender.A1.host=smtp.gmail.com log4j.appender.A1.username=myGMailUser log4j.appender.A1.password=myPassword log4j.appender.A1.fromAddress=myGMailUser@gmail.com log4j.appender.A1.toAddress=notifyUser@gmail.com 
Non-SSL
log4j.appender.A1.Threshold=ERROR log4j.appender.A1.emailSubject=Application X had a problem log4j.appender.A1.applicationName=My Test Application   log4j.appender.A1.ssl=false log4j.appender.A1.auth=true log4j.appender.A1.tls=true log4j.appender.A1.port=587 log4j.appender.A1.host=smtp.gmail.com log4j.appender.A1.username=myGMailUser log4j.appender.A1.password=myPassword log4j.appender.A1.fromAddress=myGMailUser@gmail.com log4j.appender.A1.toAddress=notifyUser@gmail.com

Java

Once you have configured LOG4J any use of a LOG4J logger for a message type of error or fatal will be emailed to JEMH.  Below is a simple example of logging an error:

LOG4J Example

SLF4J

SLF4J uses the LOG4J framework for processing logging messages.  To use the SLF4J features you will need to include the following Maven dependences: org.slf4j.slf4j-api, org.slf4j.slf4j-log4j12 and the dependencies from the LOG4J section.

Configuration

To Configure SLF4J you will need to use the configuration outlined in the LOG4J Configuration section.

Java

Once you have configured SLF4J any logging of an error message will be emailed to JEMH.  Below is an example of an error message being logged.

SLF4J Example

Examples

The examples used on this page can be found in the zip file attached.