Package ca.corbett.extras.logging

package ca.corbett.extras.logging
Contains the LogConsole and associated classes - useful for showing log information for your Swing application at runtime.

LogConsole

LogConsole is a singleton frame that contains a styleable text pane showing log messages for your application. You must specify "ca.corbett.extras.logging.LogConsoleHandler" in the "handlers" list in your logging.properties in order for LogConsole to receive log messages. A SimpleFormatter is used by default, so it will use either the default SimpleFormatter configuration, or whatever format you have specified for java.util.logging.SimpleFormatter.format in your logging.properties.

Themes and Styles

The advantage of LogConsole instead of just tailing the log file on disk is that the log output can be styled in interesting ways:
  • Log level styling - you can specify a different text color or font properties based on the Level of each log message. For example, errors can show up in bold red text, while everything else shows up in plain black text.
  • Custom log message styling - you can set up a LogConsoleStyle that looks for specific string tokens within log messages, and set a special style for them. For example, if your application generates logging related to Foo, you can set a LogConsoleStyle to watch for messages containing "Foo" and have them appear in blue text. You can use this to visually aid in spotting interesting log messages as your application does what it does.
Note that log styling only applies within the LogConsole - none of this styling will be written to your log file, or to the console.

Launching the LogConsole

You can programmatically call LogConsole.getInstance().setVisible(true) in your code, or you can use the "showLogConsole" property in AboutInfo to provide a way of launching the LogConsole from the AboutPanel, wherever that appears in your application.

Using LogConsole without java.util.logging

Even if you aren't using logging.properties and the usual java.util.logging facilities, you can still use LogConsole manually by invoking its append() method, which is the same method that the logging facilities would use to add a new log message. This allows you to use LogConsole even if you have no logging setup at all. In this case, you don't even need to set up the LogConsoleHandler as it will not be needed.
  • Classes
    Class
    Description
    LogConsole
    A singleton LogConsole window that works with LogConsoleHandler to display log messages within an application (viewable via the AboutPanel or by showing it programmatically).
    LogConsoleHandler
    A logging handler implementation specifically to support the LogConsole within applications that use sc-util.
    LogConsoleListener
    Can be used to listen for theme or style changes in a LogConsole.
    LogConsoleStyle
    Represents configuration options for a specific LogConsole message style.
    LogConsoleTheme
    A LogConsoleTheme represents a set of LogConsoleStyle objects that can be applied within the LogConsole.
    Stopwatch
    Provides static utility methods for tracking how long operations take, for logging and diagnostic purposes.