Java Logging With Abstract Classes

Question

I am working on a project, and am currently working on implementing some logging with log4j and I was curious about how I should go about implementing the logs. The two implemen

Answer 1

I wouldn't do either. Instead I would make it use the correct class in both cases.

public abstract class AbstractFoo {
    protected final Log log = LogFactory.getLog(getClass());

    ...
}

public class Foo extends AbstractFoo {
    public void someMethod() {
        log.info("Using abstract log");
    }
}

If you are not doing lots of logging (which is a good idea anyway) you can use a method instead.

public abstract class AbstractFoo {
    protected Log log() { return LogFactory.getLog(getClass()); }

    ...
}

If there is a class which calls this a lot you can override it to give you a cached instance.