Exception thrown while using logback/slf4j

Question

I am using slf4j 1.6.2 api jar (tried using 1.6.1 as well) - logback version is 0.9.29 (core & classic). I am using jdk1.6 on ubuntu. The exception I received is copied below.

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: org.slf4j.helpers.MessageFormatter.arrayFormat(Ljava/lang/String;[Ljava/lang/Object;)Lorg/slf4j/helpers/FormattingTuple;
    at ch.qos.logback.classic.spi.LoggingEvent.<init>(LoggingEvent.java:112)
    at ch.qos.logback.classic.Logger.buildLoggingEventAndAppend(Logger.java:471)
    at ch.qos.logback.classic.Logger.filterAndLog_0_Or3Plus(Logger.java:427)
    at ch.qos.logback.classic.Logger.info(Logger.java:631)

I am also getting a message complaining about slf4j binding mismatch.

"SLF4J: The requested version 1.6 by your slf4j binding is not compatible with [1.5.5, 1.5.6, 1.5.7, 1.5.8, 1.5.9, 1.5.10, 1.5.11]"

Answer 1

It very much looks like the version of slf4j-api.jar being loaded by the JVM has version 1.5.x. You surely have slf4j-api-1.5.x.jar on your class path (in addition to slf4j-api-1.6.2.jar). Check your class path.

Answer 2

Adding the following dependencies might help :

  <dependency>
      <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
      <artifactId>slf4j-api</artifactId>
      <version>1.7.7</version>
  </dependency>

  <dependency>
      <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
      <artifactId>jul-to-slf4j</artifactId>
      <version>1.7.7</version>
  </dependency>

  <dependency>
      <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
      <artifactId>jcl-over-slf4j</artifactId>
      <version>1.7.7</version>
  </dependency>

  <dependency>
      <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
      <artifactId>log4j-over-slf4j</artifactId>
      <version>1.7.7</version>
  </dependency>

  <dependency>
      <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
      <artifactId>slf4j-jdk14</artifactId>
      <version>1.7.7</version>
  </dependency>

Answer 3

slf4j-api version does not match that of the binding:

An SLF4J binding designates an artifact such as slf4j-jdk14.jar or slf4j-log4j12.jar used to bind slf4j to an underlying logging framework, say, java.util.logging and respectively log4j.

Mixing different versions of slf4j-api.jar and SLF4J binding can cause problems. For example, if you are using slf4j-api-1.7.2.jar, then you should also use slf4j-simple-1.7.2.jar, using slf4j-simple-1.5.5.jar will not work.

NOTE From the client's perspective all versions of slf4j-api are compatible. Client code compiled with slf4j-api-N.jar will run perfectly fine with slf4j-api-M.jar for any N and M. You only need to ensure that the version of your binding matches that of the slf4j-api.jar. You do not have to worry about the version of slf4j-api.jar used by a given dependency in your project. You can always use any version of slf4j-api.jar, and as long as the version of slf4j-api.jar and its binding match, you should be fine.

At initialization time, if SLF4J suspects that there may be a api vs. binding version mismatch problem, it will emit a warning about the suspected mismatch.

Got from http://www.slf4j.org, I hope it can help.

Answer 4

Also, you must have a many slf4j-api jars of versions mentioned in the []. Try keeping a single version of slf4j-api and the corresponding compatible slf4j-log4j jars in the classpath.

Mixing different versions of slf4j jars will always be troublesome

The NoSuchMethodError is due to the discovery of Methods-with-the-same-name more than once, probably coming from the different versions of the same jars