How to disable logback ConsoleAppender in Spring Boot

Question

I am building a command line application using Spring Boot. In such an application, logback console logging is not appropriate. How can I completely disable the console appender, but still have the file appender working with the default Spring Boot support?

Update

I have created a feature request for simpler support of this feature here:

https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-boot/issues/1612

Answer 1

Using Spring Boot 1.3.0, I created a file logback-spring.xml (in src/main/resources with the following content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
    <include resource="org/springframework/boot/logging/logback/defaults.xml" />
    <springProfile name="dev">
        <include resource="org/springframework/boot/logging/logback/console-appender.xml" />
        <root level="INFO">
            <appender-ref ref="CONSOLE" />
        </root>
    </springProfile>

    <springProfile name="staging,prod">
        <include resource="org/springframework/boot/logging/logback/file-appender.xml" />
        <root level="INFO">
            <appender-ref ref="FILE" />
        </root>
    </springProfile>
</configuration>

Additionally, I added the logging.file property in application-staging.properties and application-prod.properties to specify what the file name should be.

This will log to console for dev and to file for staging or prod profiles.

Answer 2

Just add a file called logback.xml in src/main/resources with content like (copied verbatim except for console part from Spring Boot's source):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>


    <property name="LOG_FILE" value="${LOG_FILE:-${LOG_PATH:-${LOG_TEMP:-${java.io.tmpdir:-/tmp}}/}spring.log}"/>
    <property name="FILE_LOG_PATTERN" value="%d{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSS} %5p ${PID:- } [%t] --- %-40.40logger{39} : %m%n%wex"/>

    <appender name="FILE"
              class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.RollingFileAppender">
        <encoder>
            <pattern>${FILE_LOG_PATTERN}</pattern>
        </encoder>
        <file>${LOG_FILE}</file>
        <rollingPolicy class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.FixedWindowRollingPolicy">
            <fileNamePattern>${LOG_FILE}.%i</fileNamePattern>
        </rollingPolicy>
        <triggeringPolicy
                class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.SizeBasedTriggeringPolicy">
            <MaxFileSize>10MB</MaxFileSize>
        </triggeringPolicy>
    </appender>

    <root level="INFO">
        <appender-ref ref="FILE" />
    </root>

</configuration>

Note that

<property name="LOG_FILE" value="${LOG_FILE:-${LOG_PATH:-${LOG_TEMP:-${java.io.tmpdir:-/tmp}}/}spring.log}"/>

is needed in order to support setting the log file from Spring Boot's logging.file and logging.path.

If all you want to do is set some standard log file, you could set place it's path in property above.

Update (02-04-2015)

In newer versions of Spring Boot you can easily just include the base.xml from Spring Boot and create the following logback.xml.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
    <include resource="org/springframework/boot/logging/logback/base.xml" />

    <root level="INFO">
        <appender-ref ref="FILE" />
    </root>
</configuration>

Update (15-09-2017)

In order to get this working on Spring Boot 1.5.x and 2.0.0.M4 I added a file called logback-spring.xml and added it in the resources directory. The file could look like this

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>


    <property name="LOG_FILE" value="${LOG_FILE:-${LOG_PATH:-${LOG_TEMP:-${java.io.tmpdir:-/tmp}}/}spring.log}"/>
    <property name="FILE_LOG_PATTERN" value="%d{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSS} %5p ${PID:- } [%t] --- %-40.40logger{39} : %m%n"/>

    <appender name="FILE"
              class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.RollingFileAppender">
        <encoder>
            <pattern>${FILE_LOG_PATTERN}</pattern>
        </encoder>
        <file>${LOG_FILE}</file>
        <rollingPolicy class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.FixedWindowRollingPolicy">
            <fileNamePattern>${LOG_FILE}.%i</fileNamePattern>
        </rollingPolicy>
        <triggeringPolicy
                class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.SizeBasedTriggeringPolicy">
            <MaxFileSize>10MB</MaxFileSize>
        </triggeringPolicy>
    </appender>

    <root level="INFO">
        <appender-ref ref="FILE" />
    </root>

</configuration>

Answer 3

Tested with latest 1.3.1 spring boot release..

place logback.xml under resource folder

logback.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
    <include resource="org/springframework/boot/logging/logback/defaults.xml" />
    <property name="LOG_FILE" value="${LOG_FILE:-${LOG_PATH:-${LOG_TEMP:-${java.io.tmpdir:-/tmp}}/}spring.log}"/>
    <include resource="org/springframework/boot/logging/logback/file-appender.xml" />

    <!-- Send debug messages to a file "application.log" -->
    <appender name="FILE" class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.RollingFileAppender">

        <file>application.log</file>

        <encoder class="ch.qos.logback.classic.encoder.PatternLayoutEncoder">
            <Pattern>%d{yyyy-MM-dd_HH:mm:ss.SSS} [%thread] %-5level %logger{36} - %msg%n</Pattern>
        </encoder>

        <rollingPolicy class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.FixedWindowRollingPolicy">
            <FileNamePattern>application.%i.log</FileNamePattern>
            <MinIndex>1</MinIndex>
            <MaxIndex>10</MaxIndex>
        </rollingPolicy>

        <triggeringPolicy class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.SizeBasedTriggeringPolicy">
            <MaxFileSize>10MB</MaxFileSize>
        </triggeringPolicy>
    </appender>

    <root level="DEBUG">
        <appender-ref ref="FILE" />
    </root>
</configuration>

Also make sure to remove exclusions of spring-boot-starter-logging from "spring-boot-starter" and "spring-boot-starter-web" dependency, if you added exclusions before.

No need of below dependencies

<dependency>
    <groupId>ch.qos.logback</groupId>
    <artifactId>logback-classic</artifactId>
    <version>1.1.2</version>
</dependency>


<dependency>
    <groupId>ch.qos.logback</groupId>
    <artifactId>logback-core</artifactId>
    <version>1.1.2</version>
</dependency>

application.properties

logging.level.root=WARN
logging.level.org.springframework.web=DEBUG

Answer 4

I tried removing console configuration from logback.xml. But, It was still logging in console. So What I did is, I just removed the appender being added in the logging configuration by springboot. Thereby, we can stop springboot logging in console and separate log file. Add the below lines at the end of your application specific appenders are added. Your custom appender should not match any of these appender names. It worked for me.

// get instance of your log4j instance
Logger logger = LogManager.getRootLogger();
logger.removeAppender("CONSOLE"); // stops console logging
logger.removeAppender("LOGFILE"); // stops file logging