[java] Disable HttpClient logging

I am using commons-httpclient 3.1 in an integration test suite. The default logging for HttpClient is extremely noisy and I can't seem to turn it off. I've tried following the instructions here but none of them make any difference.

Mostly I just need to make the org.apache.http.wire logger shut up. Part of the problem is that I don't know what type of logger HttpClient is trying to use and most of the problem is I've never used this library before. I tried creating a log4j.properties file and dropping it in my test/resources folder, modifying the master logging.properties file in jre/lib, and sending in the various logging options to Maven as specified on the logging page, and none of them make any difference.

Any help is appreciated...this is driving me nuts.

UPDATE: A correction: it appears the output in question is actually originating through jwebunit's usage of HttpClient, not my own. Either way, it's not desirable.

UPDATE: Thanks for the attempts so far. I've tried everything suggested below but still no luck. I have a file commons-logging.properties in my src/test/resources folder with the following contents

org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory=org.apache.commons.logging.impl.Log4jFactory
log4j.configuration=log4j.properties

and a file log4j.properties in the same folder with the following contents

log4j.rootLogger=ERROR, stdout
log4j.appender.stdout=org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender
log4j.appender.stdout.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.stdout.layout.ConversionPattern=%5p [%c] %m%n

#This is the line that should make httpclient shut up
log4j.logger.org.apache.http=ERROR

However, when I run my tests I still get a bunch of output like this:

21:57:41.413 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "                                   [\r][\n]"
21:57:41.413 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "[\r][\n]"
21:57:41.413 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "                                   [\r][\n]"
21:57:41.413 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "                               </ul>[\n]"
21:57:41.413 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "    [\n]"
21:57:41.424 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "[\n]"
21:57:41.425 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "[\r][\n]"
21:57:41.425 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "[\r][\n]"
21:57:41.425 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "                   </div>[\r][\n]"
21:57:41.425 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "                </li>[\r][\n]"
21:57:41.425 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "            [\r][\n]"
21:57:41.425 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "            [\r][\n]"
21:57:41.433 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "        </ul>[\n]"
21:57:41.433 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "</div>[\n]"
21:57:41.433 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "[\n]"
21:57:41.433 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "</div>[\n]"
21:57:41.433 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "[\n]"
21:57:41.433 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "[\n]"
21:57:41.433 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "[\n]"
21:57:41.433 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "[\n]"
21:57:41.433 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "<div class="details">[\n]"
21:57:41.442 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "[\n]"
21:57:41.443 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "[\n]"
21:57:41.443 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "<div class="details-body details-precis  ">[\n]
"
21:57:41.443 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "<div class="details-state">[\n]"
21:57:41.443 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "[\n]"
21:57:41.443 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "</div>[\n]"
21:57:41.443 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "</div>[\n]"
21:57:41.443 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "[\n]"
21:57:41.455 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "[\n]"
21:57:41.455 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "</div>[\n]"
21:57:41.455 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "[\n]"
21:57:41.455 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "</div>[\n]"
21:57:41.455 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "</div>[\n]"
21:57:41.455 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "[\n]"
21:57:41.455 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "[\n]"
21:57:41.455 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "[\n]"
21:57:41.455 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "[\r][\n]"
Destroying 1 processes21:57:41.465 [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire - << "[\r][\n]"

This output for everything that comes across the wire is making this library unusable for me...that is until I can figure out how to turn it off. Is there anything special I need to do to get this log configuration read in?

Add the below lines in the log4j property file and it will shut the http logs :- log4j.logger.org.apache.http=OFF

I had the same problem with JWebUnit. Please notice that if you use binary distribution then Logback is a default logger. To use log4j with JWebUnit I performed following steps:

• removed Logback jars
• add lod4j bridge library for sfl4j - slf4j-log4j12-1.6.4.jar
• add log4j.properties

Probably you don't have to remove Logback jars but you will need some additional step to force slf4j to use log4j

I experienced such problem after setting HttpComponentsClientHttpRequestFactory for my rest template.

Setting OkHttpClientHttpRequestFactory should solve problem with trash logging.

I've been plagued by the same issue for quite some time now and finally decided to look into this. It turned out the issue is that my project had a dependency on http-builder-0.5.2.jar which bundled a log4j.xml file within itself. And sure enough, the log level for org.apache.http.wire was DEBUG! The way I found it was just to go through all the jar files in my dependencies and do "jar tvf" and grepping for log4j.

While this discovery led to the eventual solution of upping the version of my http-builder dependency to 0.6, it still baffles me what must have gone through the developer's mind when bundling the log4j.xml file into the jar file. Anyway, that's probably not relevant to this thread for now. But I figured it's useful to mention this solution I found given that when I was searching for a solution before now, mine never came up. Hopefully someone will find this useful.

There are already many answers. Anyway, I want to write what worked for me so it may help anyone to try.

I created a logback-test.xml within src/test/resources with the following:

<configuration>
    <include resource="/org/springframework/boot/logging/logback/base.xml"/>
    <appender name="STDOUT" class="ch.qos.logback.core.ConsoleAppender">
        <encoder>
            <pattern>%d{HH:mm:ss.SSS} [%thread] %-5level %logger{36} - %msg%n
            </pattern>
        </encoder>
    </appender>
    <root level="info">
        <appender-ref ref="STDOUT"/>
    </root>
</configuration>

Started build after this, Junit runner picked up the above mentioned log level "info" and there are no org.apache.http logs.

This took me ages to figure out once, you need this:

log4j.logger.httpclient.wire=ERROR

I guess HttpClient uses "httpclient.wire" as its logger name, not "org.apache.commons.httpclient".

Sneaky buggers.

In my case I use xml configuration, and I append this to the configuration file

<logger name="org.apache.http">
    <level value="warn"/>
</logger>

I had this issue while using RestAssured with JUnit. For me this programmatic approach worked:

@BeforeClass
public static void setUpClass() {
    ch.qos.logback.classic.Logger root = (ch.qos.logback.classic.Logger) org.slf4j.LoggerFactory.getLogger("org.apache.http");
    root.setLevel(ch.qos.logback.classic.Level.INFO);

    //...
}

For me, the below lines in the log4j.properties file cleaned up all the mess that came from HttpClient logging... Hurray!!! :)

log4j.logger.org.apache.http.headers=ERROR
log4j.logger.org.apache.http.wire=ERROR
log4j.logger.org.apache.http.impl.conn.PoolingHttpClientConnectionManager=ERROR
log4j.logger.org.apache.http.impl.conn.DefaultManagedHttpClientConnection=ERROR
log4j.logger.org.apache.http.conn.ssl.SSLConnectionSocketFactory=ERROR
log4j.logger.org.springframework.web.client.RestTemplate=ERROR
log4j.logger.org.apache.http.client.protocol.RequestAddCookies=ERROR
log4j.logger.org.apache.http.client.protocol.RequestAuthCache=ERROR
log4j.logger.org.apache.http.impl.execchain.MainClientExec=ERROR
log4j.logger.org.apache.http.impl.conn.DefaultHttpClientConnectionOperator=ERROR

I had this same problem when running jwebunit integration tests. I fixed it by excluding logback and adding in slf4j-log4j12, like so:

<dependency>
  <groupId>net.sourceforge.jwebunit</groupId>
  <artifactId>jwebunit-htmlunit-plugin</artifactId>
  <version>3.0</version>
  <exclusions>
    <exclusion>
      <groupId>ch.qos.logback</groupId>
      <artifactId>logback-classic</artifactId>
    </exclusion>
  </exclusions>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
  <artifactId>slf4j-log4j12</artifactId>
</dependency>

The following 2 lines solved my problem completely:

Logger.getLogger("org.apache.commons.httpclient").setLevel(Level.ERROR);
Logger.getLogger("httpclient").setLevel(Level.ERROR);

I tried all above solutions to no avail. The one soution that came the closest for me was the one suggesting creating a logback.xml. That worked, however nothing got logged. After playing around with the logback.xml, this is what I ended up with

<configuration>
  <appender name="STDOUT" class="ch.qos.logback.core.ConsoleAppender">
    <withJansi>true</withJansi>
    <encoder class="ch.qos.logback.classic.encoder.PatternLayoutEncoder">
    </encoder>
  </appender>
  <root level="INFO">
    <appender-ref ref="STDOUT"/>
  </root>
</configuration>

Now All levels below DEBUG gets logged correctly.

I was led to this post when searching for solution for similar problem. Tim's answer was very helpful. like Matt Baker, I just want to shut off httpClient log without too much configuration. As we were not sure which logging implementation underneath common-logging was used, My solution was to force it using log4j by throwing log4j jar file in the class path. Default setting of log4j configuration shuts off common-httpclient debug output. Of course, to make it more robust, you may create common-logging.properties and log4j.properties files to further define your logging configurations.

For apache 4.5.3, if you want to move the level for all apache http client logging to Warn, use:

log4j.logger.org.apache=WARN

Update log4j.properties to include:

log4j.logger.httpclient.wire.header=WARN
log4j.logger.httpclient.wire.content=WARN

Note that if Log4j library is not installed, HttpClient (and therefore JWebUnit) will use logback. In this situation, create or edit logback.xml to include:

<configuration>
    <logger name="org.apache" level="WARN" />
    <logger name="httpclient" level="WARN" /> 
</configuration>

Setting the log level to WARN with Log4j using the package name org.apache.commons.httpclient in log4j.properties will not work as expected:

log4j.logger.org.apache.commons.httpclient=WARN

This is because the source for HttpClient (v3.1) uses the following log names:

public static Wire HEADER_WIRE = new Wire(LogFactory.getLog("httpclient.wire.header"));
public static Wire CONTENT_WIRE = new Wire(LogFactory.getLog("httpclient.wire.content"));

This worked for my tests;

java.util.logging.Logger.getLogger("org.apache.http.wire").setLevel(java.util.logging.Level.FINEST);
java.util.logging.Logger.getLogger("org.apache.http.headers").setLevel(java.util.logging.Level.FINEST);
System.setProperty("org.apache.commons.logging.Log", "org.apache.commons.logging.impl.SimpleLog");
System.setProperty("org.apache.commons.logging.simplelog.showdatetime", "true");
System.setProperty("org.apache.commons.logging.simplelog.log.httpclient.wire", "ERROR");
System.setProperty("org.apache.commons.logging.simplelog.log.org.apache.http", "ERROR");
System.setProperty("org.apache.commons.logging.simplelog.log.org.apache.http.headers", "ERROR");

Simple way Log4j and HttpCLient (v3.1 in this case, should work for higher, could require minor changes)

Make sure all the dependencies are correct, and MD5 your downloads!!!!

import org.apache.commons.httpclient.HttpClient;  
import org.apache.log4j.Level;  
import org.apache.log4j.Logger;  

---

Logger.getLogger("org.apache.commons.httpclient").setLevel(Level.WARN);
Logger.getLogger("httpclient.wire.header").setLevel(Level.WARN);
Logger.getLogger("httpclient.wire.content").setLevel(Level.WARN);

HttpClient client = new HttpClient();

It took far too long to find this out, but JWebUnit comes bundled with the Logback logging component, so it won't even use log4j.properties or commons-logging.properties.

Instead, create a file called logback.xml and place it in your source code folder (in my case, src):

<configuration debug="false">
  <!-- definition of appender STDOUT -->
  <appender name="STDOUT" class="ch.qos.logback.core.ConsoleAppender">
    <encoder>
      <pattern>%-4relative [%thread] %-5level %logger{35} - %msg %n</pattern>
    </encoder>
  </appender>

  <root level="ERROR">
    <!-- appender referenced after it is defined -->
    <appender-ref ref="STDOUT"/>
  </root> 
</configuration>

Logback looks to still be under development and the API seems to still be changing, so this code sample may fail in the future. See also this StackOverflow question.

I put this into my log4j config file

log4j.logger.org.apache.http.wire=WARN

This limits the output to Warning level or above

Try 'log4j.logger.org.apache.http.headers=ERROR'

With:

• Log2J 2 2.11.2
• HttpClient 4.5.7 (elasticsearch 7.0.0 rest client)
• Using properties file to configure

One can add:

logger.httpclient.name=org.apache.http
logger.httpclient.level=info

With 'httpclient' in the above example being a logical name you choose.

(Tested on Java 11 OpenFX application.)

it's work for me with add "logback.xml" in class root path and below setting.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
    <logger name="org.apache" level="WARN"/>
    <logger name="httpclient" level="WARN"/>
</configuration>

In your log4.properties - do you have this set like I do below and no other org.apache.http loggers set in the file?

-org.apache.commons.logging.simplelog.log.org.apache.http=ERROR

Also if you don't have any log level specified for org.apache.http in your log4j properties file then it will inherit the log4j.rootLogger level. So if you have log4j.rootLogger set to let's say ERROR and take out org.apache.http settings in your log4j.properties that should make it only log ERROR messages only by inheritance.

UPDATE:

Create a commons-logging.properties file and add the following line to it. Also make sure this file is in your CLASSPATH.

org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory=org.apache.commons.logging.impl.Log4jFactory

Added a completed log4j file and the code to invoke it for the OP. This log4j.properties should be in your CLASSPATH. I am assuming stdout for the moment.

log4j.configuration=log4j.properties 
log4j.rootLogger=ERROR, stdout
log4j.appender.stdout=org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender
log4j.appender.stdout.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.stdout.layout.ConversionPattern=%5p [%c] %m%n

log4j.logger.org.apache.http=ERROR

Here is some code that you need to add to your class to invoke the logger.

import org.apache.commons.logging.Log;
import org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory; 

public class MyClazz
{
    private Log log = LogFactory.getLog(MyClazz.class);
    //your code for the class
}

Note: Some of this answer might repeat things you already know (or think you know), but there is a bit of mis-information floating around on this question, so I'm going to start at the beginning and spell it all out

• Commons HttpClient uses Commons-Logging for all its logging needs.
• Commons-Logging is not a full logging framework, but rather, is a wrapper around several existing logging frameworks
• That means that when you want to control the logging output, you (mostly) end up configuring a library other than Commons-Logging, but because Commons-Logging wraps around several other libraries, it's hard for us to guess which one to configure without knowing your exactly setup.
• Commons-Logging can log to log4j, but it can also log to java.util.logging (JDK1.4 logging)
• Commons-Logging tries to be smart and guess which logging framework you are already using, and send its logs to that.
• If you don't already have a logging framework, and are running on a JRE that's 1.4 or above (which you really should be) then it will probably be sending its log messages to the JDK logging (java.util.logging)
• Relying on Commons-Logging's autodiscovery mechanism is prone to error. Simply adding log4j.jar onto the classpath would cause it to switch which logging mechanism it uses, which probably isn't what you want
• It is preferable for you to explicitly tell Commons-Logging which logging library to use
• You can do this by creating a commons-logging.properties file as per these instructions
• The steps you want to follow to configure the commons-httpclient logging are
  1. Decide which underlying logging framework you want to use. There are a number of choices, but probably log4j or java.util.logging are the best options for you.
  2. Set-up the commons-logging properties file to point to the correct Log implementation. e.g. to use log4j, put this into the properties file: org.apache.commons.logging.Log=org.apache.commons.logging.impl.Log4JLogger, or to use JDK logging set org.apache.commons.logging.Log=org.apache.commons.logging.impl.Jdk14Logger. These can also be set as system properties (e.g. using -D on the command line).
  3. Configure the underlying logging implementation (e.g. log4j) to ignore the messages you don't want, and output the messages you do want.

That's a lot of steps, but that's what it takes. The developers at Apache-commons tend to assume you'll already have a logging framework configured, and they can work out which one it is by auto-discovery.
If that's not true for you, then it tends to be a bit more work to get things running.

We use XML, rather than a properties file, to configure our logging output. The following code worked to silence this chatter.

<logger name="org.apache.commons.httpclient">
    <level value="fatal"/>
</logger>

<logger name="httpclient.wire.header">
    <level value="fatal"/>
</logger>

<logger name="httpclient.wire.content">
    <level value="fatal"/>
</logger>

Try put

org.apache.commons.logging.Log=org.apache.commons.logging.impl.NoOpLog

in your commons-logging.properties

This worked for me.

System.setProperty("org.apache.commons.logging.Log", "org.apache.commons.logging.impl.SimpleLog");
System.setProperty("org.apache.commons.logging.simplelog.showdatetime", "true");
System.setProperty("org.apache.commons.logging.simplelog.log.httpclient.wire.header", "error");
System.setProperty("org.apache.commons.logging.simplelog.log.org.apache.http", "error");
System.setProperty("log4j.logger.org.apache.http", "error");
System.setProperty("log4j.logger.org.apache.http.wire", "error");
System.setProperty("org.apache.commons.logging.simplelog.log.org.apache.commons.httpclient", "error");

For me it was very simple solution :

I had to add log4j dependancies in my POM.xml and that resolved unnecessary loggings .

   <dependency>_x000D_
   <groupId>org.apache.logging.log4j</groupId>_x000D_
   <artifactId>log4j-api</artifactId>_x000D_
   <version>2.6.1</version>_x000D_
  </dependency>_x000D_
  <dependency>_x000D_
   <groupId>org.apache.logging.log4j</groupId>_x000D_
   <artifactId>log4j-core</artifactId>_x000D_
   <version>2.6.1</version>_x000D_
  </dependency>

Simply add these two dependencies in the pom file: I have tried and succeed after trying the discussion before.

<!--Using logback-->
<dependency>
   <groupId>commons-logging</groupId>
   <artifactId>commons-logging</artifactId>
   <version>1.2</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
   <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
   <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-logging</artifactId>
</dependency>

Commons-Logging -> Logback and default Info while Debug will not be present; You can use:

private static Logger log = LoggerFactory.getLogger(HuaweiAPI.class);

to define the information you want to log:like Final Result like this. Only the information I want to log will be present.

For log4j, add the following to log4j.properties (in the application's source directory):

log4j.logger.org.apache=WARN
log4j.logger.httpclient=WARN

For logback, the following logback.xml will kill the noise:

<configuration>
    <logger name="org.apache" level="WARN" />
    <logger name="httpclient" level="WARN" /> 
</configuration>

I was also having the same problem. The entire console was filled with [main] DEBUG org.apache.http.wire while running the tests.

The solution which worked for me was creating a logback-test.xml src/test/resources/logback-test.xml as in https://github.com/bonigarcia/webdrivermanager-examples/blob/master/src/test/resources/logback-test.xml (ref - https://github.com/bonigarcia/webdrivermanager/issues/203)

To view my logging infos, I replaced logger name="io.github.bonigarcia" with my package name

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
    <appender name="STDOUT" class="ch.qos.logback.core.ConsoleAppender">
        <encoder>
            <pattern>%d{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss} [%thread] %-5level %logger{36} - %msg%n</pattern>
        </encoder>
    </appender>

    <logger name="com.mypackage" level="DEBUG" />
    <logger name="org" level="INFO" />
    <logger name="com" level="INFO" />

    <root level="INFO">
        <appender-ref ref="STDOUT" />
    </root>

</configuration>

The best solution I found was to use the maven enforcer plugin in order to prevent commons-logging from being used altogether. Then I added the slf4j dependency for logging instead. So add the following to your pom.xml

<dependency>
        <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
        <artifactId>slf4j-api</artifactId>
        <version>[your version here]</version>
    </dependency>

and also add the maven-enforcer plugin

<plugin>
           <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
           <artifactId>maven-enforcer-plugin</artifactId>
           <version>[your version here]</version>
           <executions>
               <execution>
                   <id>enforce</id>
                   <configuration>
                       <rules>
                           <DependencyConvergence />
                           <bannedDependencies>
                               <excludes>
                                   <exclude>commons-logging:commons-logging</exclude>
                               </excludes>
                           </bannedDependencies>
                       </rules>
                   </configuration>
                   <goals>
                       <goal>enforce</goal>
                   </goals>
               </execution>
           </executions>
       </plugin>