Jakarta Commons Cookbook

7.9. Obtaining Commons Logging

Problem

You need to use Commons Logging to develop a system that works under various logging frameworks, including Sun’s logging framework and Apache Log4J.

Solution

Download Commons Logging 1.0.3. Following the steps outlined in Recipe 1.1, download “Commons Logging 1.0.3” instead of Commons Lang. The Commons Logging archive—commons-logging-1.0.3.zip—will contain a file named commons-logging.jar. Place this JAR file in your classpath, and you will be ready to use Commons Logging.

Discussion

Commons Logging was created for developers who need to create components or libraries that may need to operate in environments with different logging frameworks, including Apache Log4J and the built-in logging framework introduced in Java 1.4. Using Commons Logging, a component like Commons BeanUtils or Commons Digester can write log messages to an abstracted Log interface, and Commons Logging can deal with passing these log messages to whichever logging framework is available. Commons Logging is used in almost every Jakarta Commons component.

If you have a Maven project that needs to use Commons Logging, add a dependency on Commons Logging 1.0.3 with the following section in project.xml:

<dependencies>
  <dependency>
    <id>commons-logging</id>
    <version>1.0.3</version>
  </dependency>

  ....other dependencies...
</dependencies>

See Also

For more information about Commons Logging, see the Commons Logging project site (http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/logging).