Forcing Tomcat to log through SLF4J/Logback

So you have your executable web application in JAR with bundled Tomcat (make sure to read that one first). However there are these annoying Tomcat logs at the beginning, independent from our application logs and not customizable

Nov 24, 2012 11:44:02 PM org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol init
INFO: Initializing ProtocolHandler ["http-bio-8080"]
Nov 24, 2012 11:44:02 PM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardService startInternal
INFO: Starting service Tomcat
Nov 24, 2012 11:44:02 PM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine startInternal
INFO: Starting Servlet Engine: Apache Tomcat/7.0.30
Nov 24, 2012 11:44:05 PM org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol start
INFO: Starting ProtocolHandler ["http-bio-8080"]

I would really like to quite them down, or even better save them somewhere since they sometimes reveal important failures. But I definitely don't want to have a separate java.util.logging configuration. Did you wonder after reading the previous article how did I knew that runnable Tomcat JAR supports -httpPort parameter and few others? Well, I checked the sources, but it's simpler to just ask for help:

$ java -jar target/standalone.jar -help
usage: java -jar [path to your exec war jar]
 -ajpPort <ajpPort>                     ajp port to use
 -clientAuth                            enable client authentication for
                                        https
 -D <arg>                               key=value
 -extractDirectory <extractDirectory>   path to extract war content,
                                        default value: .extract
 -h,--help                              help
 -httpPort <httpPort>                   http port to use
 -httpProtocol <httpProtocol>           http protocol to use: HTTP/1.1 or
                                        org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Nio
                                        Protocol
 -httpsPort <httpsPort>                 https port to use
 -keyAlias <keyAlias>                   alias from keystore for ssl
 -loggerName <loggerName>               logger to use: slf4j to use slf4j
                                        bridge on top of jul
 -obfuscate <password>                  obfuscate the password and exit
 -resetExtract                          clean previous extract directory
 -serverXmlPath <serverXmlPath>         server.xml to use, optional
 -uriEncoding <uriEncoding>             connector uriEncoding default
                                        ISO-8859-1
 -X,--debug       

The -loggerName parameter looks quite promising. First try:

$ java -jar target/standalone.jar -loggerName slf4j
WARNING: issue configuring slf4j jul bridge, skip it

No good. Quick look at the source code again and it turns out that SLF4J library is missing. Since this parameter is interpreted during Tomcat bootstrapping (way before web application is deployed), slf4j-api.jar inside my web application is not enough, it has to be available for root class loader (equivalent to /lib directory in packaged Tomcat). Luckily plugin exposes <extraDependencies/> configuration parameter:

<configuration>
    <path>/standalone</path>
    <enableNaming>false</enableNaming>
    <finalName>standalone.jar</finalName>
    <charset>utf-8</charset>
    <extraDependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
            <artifactId>slf4j-api</artifactId>
            <version>1.7.2</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
            <artifactId>jul-to-slf4j</artifactId>
            <version>1.7.2</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>ch.qos.logback</groupId>
            <artifactId>logback-classic</artifactId>
            <version>1.0.7</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>ch.qos.logback</groupId>
            <artifactId>logback-core</artifactId>
            <version>1.0.7</version>
        </dependency>
    </extraDependencies>
</configuration>

Running Tomcat and... success!

00:01:27.110 [main] INFO  o.a.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol - Initializing ProtocolHandler ["http-bio-8080"]
00:01:27.127 [main] INFO  o.a.catalina.core.StandardService - Starting service Tomcat
00:01:27.128 [main] INFO  o.a.catalina.core.StandardEngine - Starting Servlet Engine: Apache Tomcat/7.0.33
00:01:29.645 [main] INFO  o.a.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol - Starting ProtocolHandler ["http-bio-8080"]

Well, not quite. If you use Logback on a daily basis you are familiar with default console logging pattern. We are not picking up any logback.xml. From my experience it seems that placing logback.xml externally somewhere in your file system is superior to putting it inside your binary, especially with auto refreshing feature turned on:

<configuration scan="true" scanPeriod="5 seconds">
    <!-- ... -->
</configuration>

Put some fallback logback.xml file in the root of your CLASSPATH in case no other file was specified like below and voilà:

$ java -jar standalone.jar -httpPort=8081 -loggerName=slf4j \
    -Dlogback.configurationFile=/etc/foo/logback.xml

Finally, clean and consistent logging, most likely to a single file.