Layout::PatternLayout(3)

NAME
Log::Log4perl::Layout::PatternLayout - Pattern Layout

SYNOPSIS
  use Log::Log4perl::Layout::PatternLayout;

  my $layout = Log::Log4perl::Layout::PatternLayout->new(
                                                   "%d (%F:%L)> %m");

DESCRIPTION
Creates a pattern layout according to http://jakarta.apache.org/log4j/docs/api/org/apache/log4j/PatternLayout.html and a couple of Log::Log4perl-specific extensions.

The "new()" method creates a new PatternLayout, specifying its log format. The format string can contain a number of placeholders which will be replaced by the logging engine when it's time to log the message:

    %c Category of the logging event.
    %C Fully qualified package (or class) name of the caller
    %d Current date in yyyy/MM/dd hh:mm:ss format
    %d{...} Current date in customized format (see below)
    %F File where the logging event occurred
    %H Hostname (if Sys::Hostname is available)
    %l Fully qualified name of the calling method followed by the
       callers source the file name and line number between
       parentheses.
    %L Line number within the file where the log statement was issued
    %m The message to be logged
    %m{chomp} The message to be logged, stripped off a trailing newline
    %M Method or function where the logging request was issued
    %n Newline (OS-independent)
    %p Priority of the logging event (%p{1} shows the first letter)
    %P pid of the current process
    %r Number of milliseconds elapsed from program start to logging
       event
    %R Number of milliseconds elapsed from last logging event to
       current logging event
    %T A stack trace of functions called
    %x The topmost NDC (see below)
    %X{key} The entry 'key' of the MDC (see below)
    %% A literal percent (%) sign

NDC and MDC are explained in "Nested Diagnostic Context (NDC)" in Log::Log4perl and "Mapped Diagnostic Context (MDC)" in Log::Log4perl.

The granularity of time values is milliseconds if Time::HiRes is available. If not, only full seconds are used.

Every once in a while, someone uses the "%m%n" pattern and additionally provides an extra newline in the log message (e.g. "->log("message\n")". To avoid printing an extra newline in this case, the PatternLayout will chomp the message, printing only one newline. This option can be controlled by PatternLayout's "message_chomp_before_newline" option. See "Advanced options" for details.

  Quantify placeholders
All placeholders can be extended with formatting instructions, just like in printf:

    %20c   Reserve 20 chars for the category, right-justify and fill
           with blanks if it is shorter
    %-20c  Same as %20c, but left-justify and fill the right side
           with blanks
    %09r   Zero-pad the number of milliseconds to 9 digits
    %.8c   Specify the maximum field with and have the formatter
           cut off the rest of the value

  Fine-tuning with curlies
Some placeholders have special functions defined if you add curlies with content after them:

    %c{1}  Just show the right-most category compontent, useful in large
           class hierarchies (Foo::Baz::Bar -> Bar)
    %c{2}  Just show the two right most category components
           (Foo::Baz::Bar -> Baz::Bar)

    %F     Display source file including full path
    %F{1}  Just display filename
    %F{2}  Display filename and last path component (dir/test.log)
    %F{3}  Display filename and last two path components (d1/d2/test.log)

    %M     Display fully qualified method/function name
    %M{1}  Just display method name (foo)
    %M{2}  Display method name and last path component (main::foo)

In this way, you're able to shrink the displayed category or limit file/path components to save space in your logs.

  Fine-tune the date
If you're not happy with the default %d format for the date which looks like

    yyyy/MM/DD HH:mm:ss

(which is slightly different from Log4j which uses "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss,SSS") you're free to fine-tune it in order to display only certain characteristics of a date, according to the SimpleDateFormat in the Java World (http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/api/java/text/SimpleDateFormat.html):

    %d{HH:mm}     "23:45" -- Just display hours and minutes
    %d{yy, EEEE}  "02, Monday" -- Just display two-digit year
                                  and spelled-out weekday
Here's the symbols and their meaning, according to the SimpleDateFormat
specification:

    Symbol   Meaning                 Presentation     Example
    ------   -------                 ------------     -------
    G        era designator          (Text)           AD
    y        year                    (Number)         1996
    M        month in year           (Text & Number)  July & 07
    d        day in month            (Number)         10
    h        hour in am/pm (1-12)    (Number)         12
    H        hour in day (0-23)      (Number)         0
    m        minute in hour          (Number)         30
    s        second in minute        (Number)         55
    E        day in week             (Text)           Tuesday
    D        day in year             (Number)         189
    a        am/pm marker            (Text)           PM
    e        epoch seconds           (Number)         1315011604

    (Text): 4 or more pattern letters--use full form, < 4--use short or
            abbreviated form if one exists.

    (Number): the minimum number of digits. Shorter numbers are
              zero-padded to this amount. Year is handled
              specially; that is, if the count of 'y' is 2, the
              Year will be truncated to 2 digits.

    (Text & Number): 3 or over, use text, otherwise use number.

There's also a bunch of pre-defined formats:

    %d{ABSOLUTE}   "HH:mm:ss,SSS"
    %d{DATE}       "dd MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss,SSS"
    %d{ISO8601}    "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss,SSS"

  Custom cspecs
First of all, "cspecs" is short for "conversion specifiers", which is the log4j and the printf(3) term for what Mike is calling "placeholders." I suggested "cspecs" for this part of the api before I saw that Mike was using "placeholders" consistently in the log4perl documentation. Ah, the joys of collaboration ;=) --kg

If the existing corpus of placeholders/cspecs isn't good enough for you, you can easily roll your own:

    #'U' a global user-defined cspec
    log4j.PatternLayout.cspec.U = sub { return "UID: $< "}

    #'K' cspec local to appndr1                 (pid in hex)
    log4j.appender.appndr1.layout.cspec.K = sub { return sprintf "%1x", $$}

    #and now you can use them
    log4j.appender.appndr1.layout.ConversionPattern = %K %U %m%n

The benefit of this approach is that you can define and use the cspecs right next to each other in the config file.

If you're an API kind of person, there's also this call:

    Log::Log4perl::Layout::PatternLayout::
                    add_global_cspec('Z', sub {'zzzzzzzz'}); #snooze?

When the log message is being put together, your anonymous sub will be called with these arguments:

    ($layout, $message, $category, $priority, $caller_level);

    layout: the PatternLayout object that called it
    message: the logging message (%m)
    category: e.g. groceries.beverages.adult.beer.schlitz
    priority: e.g. DEBUG|WARN|INFO|ERROR|FATAL
    caller_level: how many levels back up the call stack you have
        to go to find the caller

Please note that the subroutines you're defining in this way are going to be run in the "main" namespace, so be sure to fully qualify functions and variables if they're located in different packages. Also make sure these subroutines aren't using Log4perl, otherwise Log4perl will enter an infinite recursion.

With Log4perl 1.20 and better, cspecs can be written with parameters in curly braces. Writing something like

    log4perl.appender.Screen.layout.ConversionPattern = %U{user} %U{id} %m%n

will cause the cspec function defined for %U to be called twice, once with the parameter 'user' and then again with the parameter 'id', and the placeholders in the cspec string will be replaced with the respective return values.

The parameter value is available in the 'curlies' entry of the first parameter passed to the subroutine (the layout object reference). So, if you wanted to map %U{xxx} to entries in the POE session hash, you'd write something like:

   log4perl.PatternLayout.cspec.U = sub { \
     POE::Kernel->get_active_session->get_heap()->{ $_[0]->{curlies} } }

SECURITY NOTE

This feature means arbitrary perl code can be embedded in the config file. In the rare case where the people who have access to your config file are different from the people who write your code and shouldn't have execute rights, you might want to set

    $Log::Log4perl::Config->allow_code(0);

before you call init(). Alternatively you can supply a restricted set of Perl opcodes that can be embedded in the config file as described in "Restricting what Opcodes can be in a Perl Hook" in Log::Log4perl.

  Advanced Options
The constructor of the "Log::Log4perl::Layout::PatternLayout" class takes an optional hash reference as a first argument to specify additional options in order to (ab)use it in creative ways:

  my $layout = Log::Log4perl::Layout::PatternLayout->new(
    { time_function       => \&my_time_func,
    },
    "%d (%F:%L)> %m");

Here's a list of parameters:

time_function
    Takes a reference to a function returning the time for the time/date fields, either in seconds since the epoch or as an array, carrying seconds and microseconds, just like "Time::HiRes::gettimeofday" does.

message_chomp_before_newline
    If a layout contains the pattern "%m%n" and the message ends with a newline, PatternLayout will chomp the message, to prevent printing two newlines. If this is not desired, and you want two newlines in this case, the feature can be turned off by setting the "message_chomp_before_newline" option to a false value:

      my $layout = Log::Log4perl::Layout::PatternLayout->new(
          { message_chomp_before_newline => 0
          },
          "%d (%F:%L)> %m%n");

    In a Log4perl configuration file, the feature can be turned off like this:

        log4perl.appender.App.layout   = PatternLayout
        log4perl.appender.App.layout.ConversionPattern = %d %m%n
          # Yes, I want two newlines
        log4perl.appender.App.layout.message_chomp_before_newline = 0

  Getting rid of newlines
If your code contains logging statements like

      # WRONG, don't do that!
    $logger->debug("Some message\n");

then it's usually best to strip the newlines from these calls. As explained in "Logging newlines" in Log::Log4perl, logging statements should never contain newlines, but rely on appender layouts to add necessary newlines instead.

If changing the code is not an option, use the special PatternLayout placeholder %m{chomp} to refer to the message excluding a trailing newline:

    log4perl.appender.App.layout.ConversionPattern = %d %m{chomp}%n

This will add a single newline to every message, regardless if it complies with the Log4perl newline guidelines or not (thanks to Tim Bunce for this idea).

LICENSE
Copyright 2002-2012 by Mike Schilli <m@perlmeister.com> and Kevin Goess <cpan@goess.org>.

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

AUTHOR
Please contribute patches to the project on Github:

    http://github.com/mschilli/log4perl

Send bug reports or requests for enhancements to the authors via our

MAILING LIST (questions, bug reports, suggestions/patches): log4perl-devel@lists.sourceforge.net

Authors (please contact them via the list above, not directly): Mike Schilli <m@perlmeister.com>, Kevin Goess <cpan@goess.org>

Contributors (in alphabetical order): Ateeq Altaf, Cory Bennett, Jens Berthold, Jeremy Bopp, Hutton Davidson, Chris R. Donnelly, Matisse Enzer, Hugh Esco, Anthony Foiani, James FitzGibbon, Carl Franks, Dennis Gregorovic, Andy Grundman, Paul Harrington, David Hull, Robert Jacobson, Jason Kohles, Jeff Macdonald, Markus Peter, Brett Rann, Peter Rabbitson, Erik Selberg, Aaron Straup Cope, Lars Thegler, David Viner, Mac Yang.