This page describes an older version of the product. The latest stable version is 16.4.

Logging API


Part of the Administration API is an extensive logging extraction and filtering from different runtime components of XAP. Here is a very simple example:

import static com.gigaspaces.log.LogEntryMatchers.*;

Admin admin = new AdminFactory().addGroup("myGroup").createAdmin();
// ...
admin.getGridServiceContainers().waitFor(1);
GridServiceContainer container = admin.getGridServiceContainers().getContainers()[0];

// get all the logs of the chosen container between 8 AM and 9 AM on November 15.
LogEntryMatcher matcher = afterTime("2009-11-15 8:00:00", beforeTime("2009-11-15 9:00:00"));
LogEntries logEntries = container.logEntries(matcher);
for (LogEntry logEntry : logEntries.logEntries()) {
    System.out.println(logEntry.getText());
}

The above example uses the Admin API in order to get the GridServiceContainer we wish to extract the logs from, and then extracts all the log entries (“log lines”) between 8 AM and 9 AM on November 15.

On Log Entry, Log Entries, and Matchers

At the base of the logging support is the LogEntry class. LogEntry represents an entry or a “row” in the results that are returned as part of the logging API call.

The LogEntry comes in two types, the first, is a LOG type. This type represents a single “log line” within the traversed log file(s) (A log line holder all the information in logger.log(…), including the exception). The LogEntry allows to access the actual text of the log line, and the timestamp of when it was taken.

The second type of a LogEntry is a FILE_MARKER. This represents the file at which the following LogEntry were extracted from. Most times, this should not care API users.

LogEntries represent a collection of LogEntry with additional meta data. LogEntries provide the host address and name, the process id, and process type (GSA, GSC, LUS, GSM) that the LogEntries were extracted from. Since most times an iteration over just the LOG type entries is required, a simple LogEntries#logEntries() method is provided that returns a list of only the LOG type entries.

CompoundLogEntries are a list of LogEntries. They exists in order to support extraction of logging information from several runtime components with a single API call. We will see an example of that later on when we see how we can get logging information from the GridServiceAgent.

The extraction of logging information is performed on the server side and filtering which logging information to extract is done using LogEntryMatcher. There are several built in LogEntryMatcher, all accessible through the static factory method class LogEntryMatchers.

LogEntryMatcher is responsible for both accumulating the log entries to return, as well as filtering them. The accumulating type matchers are very simple, with the LogEntryMatchers.all which is widely used which simply accumulates all the log entries that end up at it.

A LogEntryMatcherFilter is a special type (base class) of LogEntryMatcher which accepts a delegating LogEntryMatcher and controls if LogEntry will be passed to the delegating matcher or not (thus, filtering out certain log entries). Some examples of filtering log entry matchers include AfterTime, BeforeTime, Regex and so on. By default, most filtering matchers default to the all matcher as the delegating matchers if not explicitly defined.

A StreamLogEntryMatcher is a special type of matchers that can be reused between invocations and contains state that is stored on the calling side. They are very handy to perform operations such a “tail -f” of log files or iterating over large log files using chunking.

Here is an example of iterating over all the log file(s) of a specific container in chunks of 100 log entries with each call:

LogEntryMatcher matcher = forwardChunk(size(100));
while (true) {
    LogEntries logEntries = container.logEntries(matcher);
    for (LogEntry logEntry : logEntries.logEntries()) {
        System.out.println(logEntry.getText());
    }
}

And here is an example of implementing a “tail -f” type logic over the container logging (start with latest 100 log entries, and print new ones as they come):

new Thread(new Runnable() {

    private LogEntryMatcher matcher = continuous(lastN(100));

    public void run() {
        while (true) {
            final LogEntries logs = container.logEntries(matcher);
            for (LogEntry log : logs.logEntries()) {
                System.out.println(log.getText());
            }
            try {
                Thread.sleep(1000);
            } catch (InterruptedException e) {
                return;
            }
        }
    }
}).start();

Logging Extraction Process

Logging are extracted by running the provided matchers on the server side on the machine where the process is running. This can, potentially, be a heavy operation. For that reason, when using the Admin API, logging for runtime components will be automatically extracted by the Grid Service Agent if there is a Grid Service Agent that started the runtime component. If there isn’t a Grid Service Agent that started the runtime component, then the logging extraction will be executed on the actual runtime component.

All logging extraction enabled runtime components implement the LogProviderGridComponent interface. The default logEntries method automatically uses the above mentioned logic. The logEntriesDirect method will always execute on the runtime component, without trying to go to the agent if the runtime component was started by one.

Grid Service Agent

Note

The Grid Service Agent (GSA) is a XAP Premium feature, and is not available in the open source edition.

The Agent is just another component that its log files can be extracted by the above mentioned ways. It also provide additional ways to extract logs for runtime components it is managing. For example, extracting all the log information of all the different runtime components that are currently executed by the agent. Here is an example:

new Thread(new Runnable() {

    private LogEntryMatcher matcher = continuous(regex(".*INFO.*", lastN(100)), regex(".*INFO.*"));

    public void run() {
        while (true) {
            CompoundLogEntries entries = agent.liveLogEntries(matcher);
            if (entries.isEmpty()) {
                System.out.println("**** EXIT");
                break;
            }
            for (LogEntries logEntries : entries.getSafeEntries()) {
                for (LogEntry log : logEntries.logEntries()) {
                    System.out.println(logEntries.getProcessType() + "/" + logEntries.getPid() + ": " + log.getText());
                }
            }
            try {
                Thread.sleep(1000);
            } catch (InterruptedException e) {
                return;
            }
        }
    }
}).start();

The above example will continuously (tail like) extract logs from all the “live” (existing running runtime components) that this agent manages. The first regex matcher is the one that the continuous matcher will use for the initial matching (the first call), and the second parameter is a regex matcher that will be applied to new log entries.

The CompoundLogEntries allows to iterate over all the LogEntries of each process sampled.