Where do I configure log4j in a JUnit test class?

java logging junit log4j
skiphoppy picture skiphoppy · May 18, 2009 · Viewed 101.6k times · Source

Looking at the last JUnit test case I wrote, I called log4j's BasicConfigurator.configure() method inside the class constructor. That worked fine for running just that single class from Eclipse's "run as JUnit test case" command. But I realize it's incorrect: I'm pretty sure our main test suite runs all of these classes from one process, and therefore log4j configuration should be happening higher up somewhere.

But I still need to run a test case by itself some times, in which case I want log4j configured. Where should I put the configuration call so that it gets run when the test case runs standalone, but not when the test case is run as part of a larger suite?

Answer

araqnid picture araqnid · May 18, 2009

I generally just put a log4j.xml file into src/test/resources and let log4j find it by itself: no code required, the default log4j initialisation will pick it up. (I typically want to set my own loggers to 'DEBUG' anyway)

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