RollingFileAppender that also deletes files older than some date

Question

Do any of the popular Java logging frameworks support a rolling file appender, that I can configure to rollover daily, and also delete any log file that is over some number of days old? I know I could use a rolling file appender and a cron, but was wondering if anyone knew of an appender that can do both.

Answer 1

Logback's classic RollingFileAppender provides this and more. An example configuration from the manual (http://logback.qos.ch/manual/appenders.html#onRollingPolicies)

 <configuration>
  <appender name="FILE" class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.RollingFileAppender">
    <file>logFile.log</file>
    <rollingPolicy class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.TimeBasedRollingPolicy">
      <!-- daily rollover -->
      <fileNamePattern>logFile.%d{yyyy-MM-dd}.log</fileNamePattern>

      <!-- keep 30 days' worth of history -->
      <maxHistory>30</maxHistory>
    </rollingPolicy>

    <encoder>
      <pattern>%-4relative [%thread] %-5level %logger{35} - %msg%n</pattern>
    </encoder>
  </appender> 

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

This provides daily rollover and 30 days of history. Place this in a file called logback.xml, or logback-test.xml for test trees, and place it in the classpath.