Redirect System.out and System.err to slf4j

Question

I needed to redirect System.out/err.println outputs to slf4j.

I know that this is not the way to do logging properly but there is an external librar

Answer 1

I solved the problem by using the LoggingOutputStream for log4j and modified it a little bit for slf4j.

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.PrintStream;

import org.slf4j.Logger;
import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;

public class SysStreamsLogger {
private static Logger sysOutLogger = LoggerFactory.getLogger("SYSOUT");
private static Logger sysErrLogger = LoggerFactory.getLogger("SYSERR");

public static final PrintStream sysout = System.out;
public static final PrintStream syserr = System.err;

protected static final String LINE_SEPERATOR = System.getProperty("line.separator");

public static void bindSystemStreams() {
    // Enable autoflush
    System.setOut(new PrintStream(new LoggingOutputStream(sysOutLogger, false), true));
    System.setErr(new PrintStream(new LoggingOutputStream(sysErrLogger, true), true));
}

public static void unbindSystemStreams() {
    System.setOut(sysout);
    System.setErr(syserr);
}

private static class LoggingOutputStream extends java.io.OutputStream {

    protected Logger log;
    protected boolean isError;

    /**
     * Used to maintain the contract of {@link #close()}.
     */
    protected boolean hasBeenClosed = false;

    /**
     * The internal buffer where data is stored.
     */
    protected byte[] buf;

    /**
     * The number of valid bytes in the buffer. This value is always in the
     * range 0 through buf.length; elements
     * buf[0] through buf[count-1] contain valid byte
     * data.
     */
    protected int count;

    /**
     * Remembers the size of the buffer for speed.
     */
    private int bufLength;

    /**
     * The default number of bytes in the buffer. =2048
     */
    public static final int DEFAULT_BUFFER_LENGTH = 2048;

    private LoggingOutputStream() {
        // illegal
    }

    /**
     * Creates the LoggingOutputStream to flush to the given Category.
     * 
     * @param log
     *            the Logger to write to
     * 
     * @param isError
     *            the if true write to error, else info
     * 
     * @exception IllegalArgumentException
     *                if cat == null or priority == null
     */
    public LoggingOutputStream(Logger log, boolean isError) throws IllegalArgumentException {
        if (log == null) {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("log == null");
        }

        this.isError = isError;
        this.log = log;
        bufLength = DEFAULT_BUFFER_LENGTH;
        buf = new byte[DEFAULT_BUFFER_LENGTH];
        count = 0;
    }

    /**
     * Closes this output stream and releases any system resources
     * associated with this stream. The general contract of
     * close is that it closes the output stream. A closed
     * stream cannot perform output operations and cannot be reopened.
     */
    @Override
    public void close() {
        flush();
        hasBeenClosed = true;
    }

    /**
     * Writes the specified byte to this output stream. The general contract
     * for write is that one byte is written to the output
     * stream. The byte to be written is the eight low-order bits of the
     * argument b. The 24 high-order bits of b are
     * ignored.
     * 
     * @param b
     *            the byte to write
     */
    @Override
    public void write(final int b) throws IOException {
        if (hasBeenClosed) {
            throw new IOException("The stream has been closed.");
        }

        // don't log nulls
        if (b == 0) {
            return;
        }

        // would this be writing past the buffer?
        if (count == bufLength) {
            // grow the buffer
            final int newBufLength = bufLength + DEFAULT_BUFFER_LENGTH;
            final byte[] newBuf = new byte[newBufLength];

            System.arraycopy(buf, 0, newBuf, 0, bufLength);

            buf = newBuf;
            bufLength = newBufLength;
        }

        buf[count] = (byte) b;
        count++;
    }

    /**
     * Flushes this output stream and forces any buffered output bytes to be
     * written out. The general contract of flush is that
     * calling it is an indication that, if any bytes previously written
     * have been buffered by the implementation of the output stream, such
     * bytes should immediately be written to their intended destination.
     */
    @Override
    public void flush() {

        if (count == 0) {
            return;
        }

        // don't print out blank lines; flushing from PrintStream puts out
        // these
        if (count == LINE_SEPERATOR.length()) {
            if (((char) buf[0]) == LINE_SEPERATOR.charAt(0) && ((count == 1) || // <-
                                                                                // Unix
                                                                                // &
                                                                                // Mac,
                                                                                // ->
                                                                                // Windows
                    ((count == 2) && ((char) buf[1]) == LINE_SEPERATOR.charAt(1)))) {
                reset();
                return;
            }
        }

        final byte[] theBytes = new byte[count];

        System.arraycopy(buf, 0, theBytes, 0, count);

        if (isError) {
            log.error(new String(theBytes));
        } else {
            log.info(new String(theBytes));
        }

        reset();
    }

    private void reset() {
        // not resetting the buffer -- assuming that if it grew that it
        // will likely grow similarly again
        count = 0;
    }
}
}

Now it's possible to redirect Sytem.out/err by calling SysStreamsLogger.bindSystemStreams() at the begining of your application.

Logging Output looks like this (from OpenEJB startup)

2012-06-27 13:44:12,792  INFO [main:] SYSOUT:181 - Apache OpenEJB 3.1.4    build: 20101112-03:32
2012-06-27 13:44:12,793  INFO [main:] SYSOUT:181 - http://openejb.apache.org/