Tomcat6 doesn't seem to load my LogFormatter class

Question

I want to customize my log messages in Tomcat6, and have created a class "MyFormatter" which looks like this: ``` public class LogFormatter extends Formatter { @Override public String format(LogRecord record) { StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(); sb.append("LOLCAT--") .append(new Date(record.getMillis())) .append(" 	") .append(record.getThreadID()) .append(" 	") .append(record.getSourceMethodName()) .append(" 	") .append(record.getSourceClassName()) .append(" 	") .append(record.getLevel().getLocalizedName()) .append(": ") .append(formatMessage(record)) .append(System.getProperty("line.separator")); return sb.toString(); } } ``` I've packed this into a .jar and placed in ${catalina.home}/lib. In my logging.properties file I've added the following: ``` 1catalina.org.apache.juli.FileHandler.level = FINE 1catalina.org.apache.juli.FileHandler.directory = ${catalina.base}/logs 1catalina.org.apache.juli.FileHandler.prefix = lolcat. 1catalina.org.apache.juli.FileHandler.formatter = my…

Accepted Answer

I found the solution.

After reading about Tomcat and Class Loading, i found that there is an order which Tomcat follows. It goes like this;

Bootstrap (/jre/lib/ext) -> System (/catalina-home/bin/) -> Common (/catalina-home/lib) -> Webapps.

tomcat-juli.jar which contains the logging stuff is loaded with the "System"-step, so when you place other logging stuff in common, it ignores it cause its already loaded.

The solution is then to place the .jar before tomcat-juli.jar is loaded aka in /jre/lib/ext.´

Edit: It's not always a great idea to keep it in the jre folder, so I found that the best solution is to put it in an endorsed directory.

```
-Djava.endorsed.dirs=${catalina_home}/endorsed
```

This endorsed directory will run before System class loading.

Tomcat6 doesn't seem to load my LogFormatter class

Solution

Problem