How to configure logback-access.xml with Spring Boot

Question

My application.yml is :

server:
  tomcat:
    accesslog:
      enabled: true
    basedir: my-tomcat

We use spring boot 1.4.3.RELEASE and I would like to configure a logback-access.xml ( under src/main/resources) with the following content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
  <!-- always a good activate OnConsoleStatusListener -->
  <statusListener class="ch.qos.logback.core.status.OnConsoleStatusListener" />

  <appender name="STDOUT" class="ch.qos.logback.core.ConsoleAppender">
    <encoder>
      <pattern>%h %l %u %user %date "%r" %s %b</pattern>
    </encoder>
  </appender>

  <appender-ref ref="STDOUT" />
</configuration>

I can see an access_log.2017-01-03.log file under my-tomcat folder with the right access logs but noting on my concole, it seems the configuration file logback-access.xml is not read.

Any idea ?

Eric

Answer 1

Am I mistaken or is this not supported natively by Spring Boot ?

Source: https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-boot/issues/2609:

Hey, I'm trying to get logback-access + tomcat working with spring boot. Has anyone been able to get this working out-of-the-box? Or is there some necessary plumbing to set up?

...

As a workaround, you can copy the access xml from the class path to the filesystem and run it there as part of your configuration class

Files.copy(this.getClass().getResourceAsStream("/logback-access.xml"),Paths.get("log-access.xml"),StandardCopyOption.REPLACE_EXISTING);
logbackValve.setFilename("log-access.xml");

Solution

Use spring-boot-ext-logback-access:

Simply adding the dependency should do it:

<dependency>
    <groupId>net.rakugakibox.spring.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>logback-access-spring-boot-starter</artifactId>
    <version>2.7.0</version>
</dependency>

Edit - Other solution for logback 1.1.6+

On the spring-boot issue mentioned above, someone posted this:

Since logback 1.1.6 there is no need of any workarounds in order to load the logback-access configuration file as a resource. Reference: http://jira.qos.ch/browse/LOGBACK-1069

All you have to do is: logbackValve.setFilename("log-access.xml");

Answer 2

Though I am late to the party posting my simple working code for posterity.

The logback's ACCESS log can be printed in the console log by the following steps:

1. Add logback-access dependency

    implementation group: 'ch.qos.logback', name: 'logback-access', version: '1.2.3'

2. Inject the TomcatServletWebServerFactory with added instance value of LogbackValve.

    @Bean
    public TomcatServletWebServerFactory servletContainer() {
        TomcatServletWebServerFactory tomcat = new TomcatServletWebServerFactory();
        tomcat.addContextValves(new LogbackValve());
        return tomcat;
    }

3. Add the below logback-access.xml into the classpath resources\conf directory.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
  <appender name="STDOUT" class="ch.qos.logback.core.ConsoleAppender">
    <encoder>
      <Pattern>combined</Pattern>
      <Pattern>[ACCESS] %h %l %u %t{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSS} %s %b %D ms</Pattern>
    </encoder>
  </appender>

  <appender-ref ref="STDOUT" />
</configuration>

The access log would be printed in the console as

"[ACCESS] <host> <date> "<httpmethod> <httpuri> HTTP/1.1" <httpstatus> "<timetaken in millisecond> ms""