How to rotate log files based on time rather than size in Log4j?

Question

I use Log4j with the RollingFileAppender to create a log rotation based on size.

How can I configure it to log to each file for a certain amount of

Answer 1

You need to use the DailyRollingFileAppender. Despite its misleading name it can be configured in a to run at configurable time periods up to minutes.

Answer 2

Use a DailyRollingFileAppender.

In particular, setting its 'datePattern' property to '.'yyyy-MM-dd-HH would cause file to rotate every hour.

Answer 3

You probably want to use a DailyRollingFileAppender. To roll them hourly, for example, you'd use a DatePattern of '.'yyyy-MM-dd-HH. For a log4j.properties file:

log4j.appender.myAppender=org.apache.log4j.DailyRollingFileAppender
log4j.appender.myAppender.DatePattern='.'yyyy-MM-dd-HH
...

Or for your programmatic configuration:

DailyRollingFileAppender appender = new DailyRollingFileAppender();
appender.setDatePattern("'.'yyyy-MM-dd-HH");

Logger root = Logger.getRootLogger();
root.addAppender(appender);

Unfortunately, using a DailyRollingFileAppender means that you can't limit the file size - this could be problematic if you have tons of logs in the given rolled period.

Answer 4

The other thing to be careful of with any rolling file appender is to make sure only one JVM access a particular log file at a time. This is because log4j caches the log file size for performance reasons, and your 'rolling' will get wonky if multiple JVMs access the same files.

Answer 5

Additionally,

log4j.appender.myAppender=org.apache.log4j.DailyRollingFileAppender
**log4j.appender.myAppender.DatePattern='.'yyyy-MM-dd-HH**

The following list shows all the date patterns which have defined by log4j,

Minutely  '.'yyyy-MM-dd-HH-mm application.log.2013-02-28-13-54
Hourly '.'yyyy-MM-dd-HH application.log.2013-02-28-13
Half-daily '.'yyyy-MM-dd-a application.log.2013-02-28-AM app.log.2013-02-28-PM
Daily '.'yyyy-MM-dd application.log.2013-02-28
Weekly '.'yyyy-ww application.log.2013-07 app.log.2013-08 
Monthly '.'yyyy-MM application.log.2013-01 app.log.2013-02