SocketAppender and PatternLayout

Question

I have a logger that send log to a log server storage. This work fine but the patternlayout isn't used. With or without that doesn't change anything. I believe remember to read somewhere that socketappender use is own pattern and not others.

<appender name="LOGSTASH" class="org.apache.log4j.net.SocketAppender"> 
        <param name="Port" value="5000"/>
        <param name="RemoteHost" value="192.168.81.131"/> 
        <param name="ReconnectionDelay" value="5000"/>
        <param name="LocationInfo" value="true" />
      <layout class="org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout">
         <param name="ConversionPattern" value="%d{ABSOLUTE} %-5p [%c{1}] %m%n" />
      </layout>
</appender> 

But on this documentation (and a few other) thay use this. Example from this doc :

<appender name="A1" class="org.apache.log4j.net.SocketAppender">
    <param name="RemoteHost" value="localhost"/>
    <param name="Port" value="5000"/>
    <param name="LocationInfo" value="true"/>
    <layout class="org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout">
        <param name="ConversionPattern" value="%t %-5p %c{2} - %m%n"/>
    </layout>
    </appender>

So is it impossible to use personnal pattern with socketappender or is it my fault?

If it's impossible is there an alternative appender for tcp logging with custom pattern?

Answer 1

It seems that SocketAppender don't use a layout.

SocketAppenders do not use a layout. They ship a serialized LoggingEvent object to the server side.

See documentation here

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So I use a SyslogAppender to replace. It's not perfect because of unused possibilies (like facility and priority) but works fine.