[java] How to do a JUnit assert on a message in a logger

I have some code-under-test that calls on a Java logger to report its status. In the JUnit test code, I would like to verify that the correct log entry was made in this logger. Something along the following lines:

methodUnderTest(bool x){
    if(x)
        logger.info("x happened")
}

@Test tester(){
    // perhaps setup a logger first.
    methodUnderTest(true);
    assertXXXXXX(loggedLevel(),Level.INFO);
}

I suppose that this could be done with a specially adapted logger (or handler, or formatter), but I would prefer to re-use a solution that already exists. (And, to be honest, it is not clear to me how to get at the logRecord from a logger, but suppose that that's possible.)

As for me you can simplify your test by using JUnit with Mockito. I propose following solution for it:

import org.apache.log4j.Appender;
import org.apache.log4j.Level;
import org.apache.log4j.LogManager;
import org.apache.log4j.spi.LoggingEvent;
import org.junit.After;
import org.junit.Before;
import org.junit.Test;
import org.junit.runner.RunWith;
import org.mockito.ArgumentCaptor;
import org.mockito.Captor;
import org.mockito.InjectMocks;
import org.mockito.Mock;
import org.mockito.runners.MockitoJUnitRunner;

import java.util.List;

import static org.assertj.core.api.Assertions.assertThat;
import static org.assertj.core.api.Assertions.tuple;
import static org.mockito.Mockito.times;

@RunWith(MockitoJUnitRunner.class)
public class MyLogTest {
    private static final String FIRST_MESSAGE = "First message";
    private static final String SECOND_MESSAGE = "Second message";
    @Mock private Appender appender;
    @Captor private ArgumentCaptor<LoggingEvent> captor;
    @InjectMocks private MyLog;

    @Before
    public void setUp() {
        LogManager.getRootLogger().addAppender(appender);
    }

    @After
    public void tearDown() {
        LogManager.getRootLogger().removeAppender(appender);
    }

    @Test
    public void shouldLogExactlyTwoMessages() {
        testedClass.foo();

        then(appender).should(times(2)).doAppend(captor.capture());
        List<LoggingEvent> loggingEvents = captor.getAllValues();
        assertThat(loggingEvents).extracting("level", "renderedMessage").containsExactly(
                tuple(Level.INFO, FIRST_MESSAGE)
                tuple(Level.INFO, SECOND_MESSAGE)
        );
    }
}

That's why we have nice flexibility for tests with different message quantity

There are two things that you might be trying to test.

• When there is an event of interest to the operator of my program, does my program perform an appropriate logging operation, which can inform the operator of that event.
• When my program performs a logging operation, does the log message it produces have the correct text.

Those two things are actually different things, and so could be tested separately. However, testing the second (the text of messages) is so problematic, I recommend against doing it at all. A test of a message text will ultimately consist of checking that one text string (the expected message text) is the same as, or can be trivially derived from, the text string used in your logging code.

• Those tests do not test program logic at all, they only test that one resource (a string) is equivalent to another resource.
• The tests are fragile; even a minor tweak to the formatting of a log message breaks your tests.
• The tests are incompatible with internationalisation (translation) of your logging interface.The tests assume there is only one possible message text, and thus only one possible human language.

Note that having your program code (implementing some business logic, perhaps) directly calling the text logging interface is poor design (but unfortunately very commom). Code that is responsible for business logic is also deciding some logging policy and the text of log messages. It mixes business logic with user interface code (yes, log messages are part of your program's user interface). Those things should be separate.

I therefore recommend that business logic does not directly generate the text of log messages. Instead have it delegate to a logging object.

• The class of the logging object should provide a suitable internal API, which your business object can use to express the event that has occurred using objects of your domain model, not text strings.
• The implementation of your logging class is responsible for producing text representations of those domain objects, and rendering a suitable text description of the event, then forwarding that text message to the low level logging framework (such as JUL, log4j or slf4j).
• Your business logic is responsible only for calling the correct methods of the internal API of your logger class, passing the correct domain objects, to describe the actual events that occurred.
• Your concrete logging class implements an interface, which describes the internal API your business logic may use.
• Your class(es) that implements business logic and must perform logging has a reference to the logging object to delegate to. The class of the reference is the abstract interface.
• Use dependency injection to set up the reference to the logger.

You can then test that your business logic classes correctly tell the logging interface about events, by creating a mock logger, which implements the internal logging API, and using dependency injection in the set up phase of your test.

Like this:

 public class MyService {// The class we want to test
    private final MyLogger logger;

    public MyService(MyLogger logger) {
       this.logger = Objects.requireNonNull(logger);
    }

    public void performTwiddleOperation(Foo foo) {// The method we want to test
       ...// The business logic
       logger.performedTwiddleOperation(foo);
    }
 };

 public interface MyLogger {
    public void performedTwiddleOperation(Foo foo);
    ...
 };

 public final class MySl4jLogger: implements MyLogger {
    ...

    @Override
    public void performedTwiddleOperation(Foo foo) {
       logger.info("twiddled foo " + foo.getId());
    }
 }

 public final void MyProgram {
    public static void main(String[] argv) {
       ...
       MyLogger logger = new MySl4jLogger(...);
       MyService service = new MyService(logger);
       startService(service);// or whatever you must do
       ...
    }
 }

 public class MyServiceTest {
    ...

    static final class MyMockLogger: implements MyLogger {
       private Food.id id;
       private int nCallsPerformedTwiddleOperation;
       ...

       @Override
       public void performedTwiddleOperation(Foo foo) {
          id = foo.id;
          ++nCallsPerformedTwiddleOperation;
       }

       void assertCalledPerformedTwiddleOperation(Foo.id id) {
          assertEquals("Called performedTwiddleOperation", 1, nCallsPerformedTwiddleOperation);
          assertEquals("Called performedTwiddleOperation with correct ID", id, this.id);
       }
    };

    @Test
    public void testPerformTwiddleOperation_1() {
       // Setup
       MyMockLogger logger = new MyMockLogger();
       MyService service = new MyService(logger);
       Foo.Id id = new Foo.Id(...);
       Foo foo = new Foo(id, 1);

       // Execute
       service.performedTwiddleOperation(foo);

       // Verify
       ...
       logger.assertCalledPerformedTwiddleOperation(id);
    }
 }

For Junit 5 (Jupiter) Spring's OutputCaptureExtension is quite useful. Its available since Spring Boot 2.2 and is available in the spring-boot-test artifact.

Example (taken from javadoc):

@ExtendWith(OutputCaptureExtension.class)
class MyTest {
    @Test
    void test(CapturedOutput output) {
        System.out.println("ok");
        assertThat(output).contains("ok");
        System.err.println("error");
    }

    @AfterEach
    void after(CapturedOutput output) {
        assertThat(output.getOut()).contains("ok");
        assertThat(output.getErr()).contains("error");
    }
}

If you are using log4j2, the solution from https://www.dontpanicblog.co.uk/2018/04/29/test-log4j2-with-junit/ allowed me to assert messages were logged.

The solution goes like this:

• Define a log4j appender as an ExternalResource rule

  public class LogAppenderResource extends ExternalResource {
  
  private static final String APPENDER_NAME = "log4jRuleAppender";
  
  /**
   * Logged messages contains level and message only.
   * This allows us to test that level and message are set.
   */
  private static final String PATTERN = "%-5level %msg";
  
  private Logger logger;
  private Appender appender;
  private final CharArrayWriter outContent = new CharArrayWriter();
  
  public LogAppenderResource(org.apache.logging.log4j.Logger logger) {
      this.logger = (org.apache.logging.log4j.core.Logger)logger;
  }
  
  @Override
  protected void before() {
      StringLayout layout = PatternLayout.newBuilder().withPattern(PATTERN).build();
      appender = WriterAppender.newBuilder()
              .setTarget(outContent)
              .setLayout(layout)
              .setName(APPENDER_NAME).build();
      appender.start();
      logger.addAppender(appender);
  }
  
  @Override
  protected void after() {
      logger.removeAppender(appender);
  }
  
  public String getOutput() {
      return outContent.toString();
      }
  }
  

• Define a test that use your ExternalResource rule

  public class LoggingTextListenerTest {
  
      @Rule public LogAppenderResource appender = new LogAppenderResource(LogManager.getLogger(LoggingTextListener.class)); 
      private LoggingTextListener listener = new LoggingTextListener(); //     Class under test
  
      @Test
      public void startedEvent_isLogged() {
      listener.started();
      assertThat(appender.getOutput(), containsString("started"));
      }
  }
  

Don't forget to have log4j2.xml as part of src/test/resources

Mocking the Appender can help capture the log lines. Find sample on: http://clearqa.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/test-log-lines.html

// Fully working test at: https://github.com/njaiswal/logLineTester/blob/master/src/test/java/com/nj/Utils/UtilsTest.java

@Test
public void testUtilsLog() throws InterruptedException {

    Logger utilsLogger = (Logger) LoggerFactory.getLogger("com.nj.utils");

    final Appender mockAppender = mock(Appender.class);
    when(mockAppender.getName()).thenReturn("MOCK");
    utilsLogger.addAppender(mockAppender);

    final List<String> capturedLogs = Collections.synchronizedList(new ArrayList<>());
    final CountDownLatch latch = new CountDownLatch(3);

    //Capture logs
    doAnswer((invocation) -> {
        LoggingEvent loggingEvent = invocation.getArgumentAt(0, LoggingEvent.class);
        capturedLogs.add(loggingEvent.getFormattedMessage());
        latch.countDown();
        return null;
    }).when(mockAppender).doAppend(any());

    //Call method which will do logging to be tested
    Application.main(null);

    //Wait 5 seconds for latch to be true. That means 3 log lines were logged
    assertThat(latch.await(5L, TimeUnit.SECONDS), is(true));

    //Now assert the captured logs
    assertThat(capturedLogs, hasItem(containsString("One")));
    assertThat(capturedLogs, hasItem(containsString("Two")));
    assertThat(capturedLogs, hasItem(containsString("Three")));
}

Wow. I'm unsure why this was so hard. I found I was unable to use any of the code samples above because I was using log4j2 over slf4j. This is my solution:

public class SpecialLogServiceTest {

  @Mock
  private Appender appender;

  @Captor
  private ArgumentCaptor<LogEvent> captor;

  @InjectMocks
  private SpecialLogService specialLogService;

  private LoggerConfig loggerConfig;

  @Before
  public void setUp() {
    // prepare the appender so Log4j likes it
    when(appender.getName()).thenReturn("MockAppender");
    when(appender.isStarted()).thenReturn(true);
    when(appender.isStopped()).thenReturn(false);

    final LoggerContext ctx = (LoggerContext) LogManager.getContext(false);
    final Configuration config = ctx.getConfiguration();
    loggerConfig = config.getLoggerConfig("org.example.SpecialLogService");
    loggerConfig.addAppender(appender, AuditLogCRUDService.LEVEL_AUDIT, null);
  }

  @After
  public void tearDown() {
    loggerConfig.removeAppender("MockAppender");
  }

  @Test
  public void writeLog_shouldCreateCorrectLogMessage() throws Exception {
    SpecialLog specialLog = new SpecialLogBuilder().build();
    String expectedLog = "this is my log message";

    specialLogService.writeLog(specialLog);

    verify(appender).append(captor.capture());
    assertThat(captor.getAllValues().size(), is(1));
    assertThat(captor.getAllValues().get(0).getMessage().toString(), is(expectedLog));
  }
}

The API for Log4J2 is slightly different. Also you might be using its async appender. I created a latched appender for this:

    public static class LatchedAppender extends AbstractAppender implements AutoCloseable {

    private final List<LogEvent> messages = new ArrayList<>();
    private final CountDownLatch latch;
    private final LoggerConfig loggerConfig;

    public LatchedAppender(Class<?> classThatLogs, int expectedMessages) {
        this(classThatLogs, null, null, expectedMessages);
    }
    public LatchedAppender(Class<?> classThatLogs, Filter filter, Layout<? extends Serializable> layout, int expectedMessages) {
        super(classThatLogs.getName()+"."+"LatchedAppender", filter, layout);
        latch = new CountDownLatch(expectedMessages);
        final LoggerContext ctx = (LoggerContext) LogManager.getContext(false);
        final Configuration config = ctx.getConfiguration();
        loggerConfig = config.getLoggerConfig(LogManager.getLogger(classThatLogs).getName());
        loggerConfig.addAppender(this, Level.ALL, ThresholdFilter.createFilter(Level.ALL, null, null));
        start();
    }

    @Override
    public void append(LogEvent event) {
        messages.add(event);
        latch.countDown();
    }

    public List<LogEvent> awaitMessages() throws InterruptedException {
        assertTrue(latch.await(10, TimeUnit.SECONDS));
        return messages;
    }

    @Override
    public void close() {
        stop();
        loggerConfig.removeAppender(this.getName());
    }
}

Use it like this:

        try (LatchedAppender appender = new LatchedAppender(ClassUnderTest.class, 1)) {

        ClassUnderTest.methodThatLogs();
        List<LogEvent> events = appender.awaitMessages();
        assertEquals(1, events.size());
        //more assertions here

    }//appender removed

Mocking is an option here, although it would be hard, because loggers are generally private static final - so setting a mock logger wouldn't be a piece of cake, or would require modification of the class under test.

You can create a custom Appender (or whatever it's called), and register it - either via a test-only configuration file, or runtime (in a way, dependent on the logging framework). And then you can get that appender (either statically, if declared in configuration file, or by its current reference, if you are plugging it runtime), and verify its contents.

What I have done if all I want to do is see that some string was logged (as opposed to verifying exact log statements which is just too brittle) is to redirect StdOut to a buffer, do a contains, then reset StdOut:

PrintStream original = System.out;
ByteArrayOutputStream buffer = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
System.setOut(new PrintStream(buffer));

// Do something that logs

assertTrue(buffer.toString().contains(myMessage));
System.setOut(original);

I've needed this several times as well. I've put together a small sample below, which you'd want to adjust to your needs. Basically, you create your own Appender and add it to the logger you want. If you'd want to collect everything, the root logger is a good place to start, but you can use a more specific if you'd like. Don't forget to remove the Appender when you're done, otherwise you might create a memory leak. Below I've done it within the test, but setUp or @Before and tearDown or @After might be better places, depending on your needs.

Also, the implementation below collects everything in a List in memory. If you're logging a lot you might consider adding a filter to drop boring entries, or to write the log to a temporary file on disk (Hint: LoggingEvent is Serializable, so you should be able to just serialize the event objects, if your log message is.)

import org.apache.log4j.AppenderSkeleton;
import org.apache.log4j.Level;
import org.apache.log4j.Logger;
import org.apache.log4j.spi.LoggingEvent;
import org.junit.Test;

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

import static org.hamcrest.CoreMatchers.is;
import static org.junit.Assert.assertThat;

public class MyTest {
    @Test
    public void test() {
        final TestAppender appender = new TestAppender();
        final Logger logger = Logger.getRootLogger();
        logger.addAppender(appender);
        try {
            Logger.getLogger(MyTest.class).info("Test");
        }
        finally {
            logger.removeAppender(appender);
        }

        final List<LoggingEvent> log = appender.getLog();
        final LoggingEvent firstLogEntry = log.get(0);
        assertThat(firstLogEntry.getLevel(), is(Level.INFO));
        assertThat((String) firstLogEntry.getMessage(), is("Test"));
        assertThat(firstLogEntry.getLoggerName(), is("MyTest"));
    }
}

class TestAppender extends AppenderSkeleton {
    private final List<LoggingEvent> log = new ArrayList<LoggingEvent>();

    @Override
    public boolean requiresLayout() {
        return false;
    }

    @Override
    protected void append(final LoggingEvent loggingEvent) {
        log.add(loggingEvent);
    }

    @Override
    public void close() {
    }

    public List<LoggingEvent> getLog() {
        return new ArrayList<LoggingEvent>(log);
    }
}

if you are using java.util.logging.Logger this article might be very helpful, it creates a new handler and make assertions on the log Output: http://octodecillion.com/blog/jmockit-test-logging/

Here is a simple and efficient Logback solution.
It doesn't require to add/create any new class.
It relies on ListAppender : a whitebox logback appender where log entries are added in a public List field that we could so use to make our assertions.

Here is a simple example.

Foo class :

import org.slf4j.Logger;
import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;

public class Foo {

    static final Logger LOGGER = LoggerFactory.getLogger(Foo .class);

    public void doThat() {
        LOGGER.info("start");
        //...
        LOGGER.info("finish");
    }
}

FooTest class :

import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;
import ch.qos.logback.classic.Level;
import ch.qos.logback.classic.Logger;
import ch.qos.logback.classic.spi.ILoggingEvent;
import ch.qos.logback.core.read.ListAppender;

public class FooTest {

    @Test
    void doThat() throws Exception {
        // get Logback Logger 
        Logger fooLogger = (Logger) LoggerFactory.getLogger(Foo.class);

        // create and start a ListAppender
        ListAppender<ILoggingEvent> listAppender = new ListAppender<>();
        listAppender.start();

        // add the appender to the logger
        // addAppender is outdated now
        fooLogger.addAppender(listAppender);

        // call method under test
        Foo foo = new Foo();
        foo.doThat();

        // JUnit assertions
        List<ILoggingEvent> logsList = listAppender.list;
        assertEquals("start", logsList.get(0)
                                      .getMessage());
        assertEquals(Level.INFO, logsList.get(0)
                                         .getLevel());

        assertEquals("finish", logsList.get(1)
                                       .getMessage());
        assertEquals(Level.INFO, logsList.get(1)
                                         .getLevel());
    }
}

JUnit assertions don't sound very adapted to assert some specific properties of the list elements.
Matcher/assertion libraries as AssertJ or Hamcrest appears better for that :

With AssertJ it would be :

import org.assertj.core.api.Assertions;

Assertions.assertThat(listAppender.list)
          .extracting(ILoggingEvent::getMessage, ILoggingEvent::getLevel)
          .containsExactly(Tuple.tuple("start", Level.INFO), Tuple.tuple("finish", Level.INFO));

I also ran into the same challanged and ended up at this page. Although I am 11 years too late to answers the question, I thought maybe it could be still usefull for others. I found the answer of davidxxx with Logback and the ListAppander very usefull. I used the same configuration for multiple projects, however it was not so fun to copy/paste it and maintaining all the version when I needed to changes something. I thought it would be better to make a library out of it and contribute back to the community. It works with SLFJ4, Log4j, Log4j2, Java Util Logging And with Lombok annotations. Please have a look here: LogCaptor

Example situation:

public class FooService {

    private static final Logger LOGGER = LoggerFactory.getLogger(FooService.class);

    public void sayHello() {
        LOGGER.info("Keyboard not responding. Press any key to continue...");
        LOGGER.warn("Congratulations, you are pregnant!");
    }

}

Example unit test with usage of LogCaptor:

public class FooServiceTest {

    private LogCaptor logCaptor = LogCaptor.forClass(FooService.class);

    @Test
    public void logInfoAndWarnMessages() {
        String expectedInfoMessage = "Keyboard not responding. Press any key to continue...";
        String expectedWarnMessage = "Congratulations, you are pregnant!";

        FooService fooService = new FooService();
        fooService.sayHello();

        List<String> infoLogMessages = logCaptor.getInfoLogs();
        List<String> warnLogMessages = logCaptor.getWarnLogs();
        List<String> allLogMessages = logCaptor.getLogs();

        assertThat(infoLogMessages).containsExactly(expectedInfoMessage);
        assertThat(warnLogMessages).containsExactly(expectedWarnMessage);
        assertThat(allLogMessages).containsExactly(expectedWarnMessage, expectedInfoMessage);
    }
}

I wasn't quite sure if I should post this here, because it could also be seen as a way to promote "my library" but I thought it could be helpful for developers who have the same challenges.

Here is the sample code to mock log, irrespective of the version used for junit or sping, springboot.

import ch.qos.logback.classic.spi.LoggingEvent;
import ch.qos.logback.core.Appender;
import org.mockito.ArgumentMatcher;
import org.slf4j.Logger;
import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;
import org.junit.Test;

import static org.mockito.Matchers.argThat;
import static org.mockito.Mockito.mock;
import static org.mockito.Mockito.verify;
import static org.mockito.Mockito.when;

public class MyTest {
  private static Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(MyTest.class);

    @Test
    public void testSomething() {
    ch.qos.logback.classic.Logger root = (ch.qos.logback.classic.Logger) LoggerFactory.getLogger(ch.qos.logback.classic.Logger.ROOT_LOGGER_NAME);
    final Appender mockAppender = mock(Appender.class);
    when(mockAppender.getName()).thenReturn("MOCK");
    root.addAppender(mockAppender);

    //... do whatever you need to trigger the log

    verify(mockAppender).doAppend(argThat(new ArgumentMatcher() {
      @Override
      public boolean matches(final Object argument) {
        return ((LoggingEvent)argument).getFormattedMessage().contains("Hey this is the message I want to see");
      }
    }));
  }
}

I answered a similar question for log4j see how-can-i-test-with-junit-that-a-warning-was-logged-with-log4

This is newer and example with Log4j2 (tested with 2.11.2) and junit 5;

    package com.whatever.log;

    import org.apache.logging.log4j.Level;
    import org.apache.logging.log4j.LogManager;
    import org.apache.logging.log4j.core.Logger;
    import org.apache.logging.log4j.core.*;
    import org.apache.logging.log4j.core.appender.AbstractAppender;
    import org.apache.logging.log4j.core.config.Configuration;
    import org.apache.logging.log4j.core.config.LoggerConfig;
    import org.apache.logging.log4j.core.config.plugins.Plugin;
    import org.apache.logging.log4j.core.config.plugins.PluginAttribute;
    import org.apache.logging.log4j.core.config.plugins.PluginElement;
    import org.apache.logging.log4j.core.config.plugins.PluginFactory;
    import org.junit.jupiter.api.AfterEach;
    import org.junit.jupiter.api.BeforeEach;
    import org.junit.jupiter.api.DisplayName;
    import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;

    import java.util.ArrayList;
    import java.util.List;
    import static org.junit.Assert.*;

class TestLogger {

    private TestAppender testAppender;
    private LoggerConfig loggerConfig;
    private final Logger logger = (Logger)
            LogManager.getLogger(ClassUnderTest.class);

    @Test
    @DisplayName("Test Log Junit5 and log4j2")
    void test() {
        ClassUnderTest.logMessage();
        final LogEvent loggingEvent = testAppender.events.get(0);
        //asset equals 1 because log level is info, change it to debug and
        //the test will fail
        assertTrue(testAppender.events.size()==1,"Unexpected empty log");
        assertEquals(Level.INFO,loggingEvent.getLevel(),"Unexpected log level");
        assertEquals(loggingEvent.getMessage().toString()
                ,"Hello Test","Unexpected log message");
    }

    @BeforeEach
    private void setup() {
        testAppender = new TestAppender("TestAppender", null);

        final LoggerContext context = logger.getContext();
        final Configuration configuration = context.getConfiguration();

        loggerConfig = configuration.getLoggerConfig(logger.getName());
        loggerConfig.setLevel(Level.INFO);
        loggerConfig.addAppender(testAppender,Level.INFO,null);
        testAppender.start();
        context.updateLoggers();
    }

    @AfterEach
    void after(){
        testAppender.stop();
        loggerConfig.removeAppender("TestAppender");
        final LoggerContext context = logger.getContext();
        context.updateLoggers();
    }

    @Plugin( name = "TestAppender", category = Core.CATEGORY_NAME, elementType = Appender.ELEMENT_TYPE)
    static class TestAppender extends AbstractAppender {

        List<LogEvent> events = new ArrayList();

        protected TestAppender(String name, Filter filter) {
            super(name, filter, null);
        }

        @PluginFactory
        public static TestAppender createAppender(
                @PluginAttribute("name") String name,
                @PluginElement("Filter") Filter filter) {
            return new TestAppender(name, filter);
        }

        @Override
        public void append(LogEvent event) {
            events.add(event);
        }
    }

    static class ClassUnderTest {
        private static final Logger LOGGER =  (Logger) LogManager.getLogger(ClassUnderTest.class);
        public static void logMessage(){
            LOGGER.info("Hello Test");
            LOGGER.debug("Hello Test");
        }
    }
}

Using the following maven dependencies

 <dependency>
 <artifactId>log4j-core</artifactId>
  <packaging>jar</packaging>
  <version>2.11.2</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.junit.jupiter</groupId>
    <artifactId>junit-jupiter-api</artifactId>
    <version>5.5.0</version>
    <scope>test</scope>
</dependency>

Here is what i did for logback.

I created a TestAppender class:

public class TestAppender extends AppenderBase<ILoggingEvent> {

    private Stack<ILoggingEvent> events = new Stack<ILoggingEvent>();

    @Override
    protected void append(ILoggingEvent event) {
        events.add(event);
    }

    public void clear() {
        events.clear();
    }

    public ILoggingEvent getLastEvent() {
        return events.pop();
    }
}

Then in the parent of my testng unit test class I created a method:

protected TestAppender testAppender;

@BeforeClass
public void setupLogsForTesting() {
    Logger root = (Logger)LoggerFactory.getLogger(Logger.ROOT_LOGGER_NAME);
    testAppender = (TestAppender)root.getAppender("TEST");
    if (testAppender != null) {
        testAppender.clear();
    }
}

I have a logback-test.xml file defined in src/test/resources and I added a test appender:

<appender name="TEST" class="com.intuit.icn.TestAppender">
    <encoder>
        <pattern>%m%n</pattern>
    </encoder>
</appender>

and added this appender to the root appender:

<root>
    <level value="error" />
    <appender-ref ref="STDOUT" />
    <appender-ref ref="TEST" />
</root>

Now in my test classes that extend from my parent test class I can get the appender and get the last message logged and verify the message, the level, the throwable.

ILoggingEvent lastEvent = testAppender.getLastEvent();
assertEquals(lastEvent.getMessage(), "...");
assertEquals(lastEvent.getLevel(), Level.WARN);
assertEquals(lastEvent.getThrowableProxy().getMessage(), "...");

For log4j2 the solution is slightly different because AppenderSkeleton is not available anymore. Additionally, using Mockito, or similar library to create an Appender with an ArgumentCaptor will not work if you're expecting multiple logging messages because the MutableLogEvent is reused over multiple log messages. The best solution I found for log4j2 is:

private static MockedAppender mockedAppender;
private static Logger logger;

@Before
public void setup() {
    mockedAppender.message.clear();
}

/**
 * For some reason mvn test will not work if this is @Before, but in eclipse it works! As a
 * result, we use @BeforeClass.
 */
@BeforeClass
public static void setupClass() {
    mockedAppender = new MockedAppender();
    logger = (Logger)LogManager.getLogger(MatchingMetricsLogger.class);
    logger.addAppender(mockedAppender);
    logger.setLevel(Level.INFO);
}

@AfterClass
public static void teardown() {
    logger.removeAppender(mockedAppender);
}

@Test
public void test() {
    // do something that causes logs
    for (String e : mockedAppender.message) {
        // add asserts for the log messages
    }
}

private static class MockedAppender extends AbstractAppender {

    List<String> message = new ArrayList<>();

    protected MockedAppender() {
        super("MockedAppender", null, null);
    }

    @Override
    public void append(LogEvent event) {
        message.add(event.getMessage().getFormattedMessage());
    }
}

Another idea worth mentioning, although it's an older topic, is creating a CDI producer to inject your logger so the mocking becomes easy. (And it also gives the advantage of not having to declare the "whole logger statement" anymore, but that's off-topic)

Example:

Creating the logger to inject:

public class CdiResources {
  @Produces @LoggerType
  public Logger createLogger(final InjectionPoint ip) {
      return Logger.getLogger(ip.getMember().getDeclaringClass());
  }
}

The qualifier:

@Qualifier
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Target({TYPE, METHOD, FIELD, PARAMETER})
public @interface LoggerType {
}

Using the logger in your production code:

public class ProductionCode {
    @Inject
    @LoggerType
    private Logger logger;

    public void logSomething() {
        logger.info("something");
    }
}

Testing the logger in your test code (giving an easyMock example):

@TestSubject
private ProductionCode productionCode = new ProductionCode();

@Mock
private Logger logger;

@Test
public void testTheLogger() {
   logger.info("something");
   replayAll();
   productionCode.logSomething();
}

Use the below code. I am using same code for my spring integration test where I am using log back for logging. Use method assertJobIsScheduled to assert the text printed in the log.

import ch.qos.logback.classic.Logger;
import ch.qos.logback.classic.spi.LoggingEvent;
import ch.qos.logback.core.Appender;

private Logger rootLogger;
final Appender mockAppender = mock(Appender.class);

@Before
public void setUp() throws Exception {
    initMocks(this);
    when(mockAppender.getName()).thenReturn("MOCK");
    rootLogger = (Logger) LoggerFactory.getLogger(ch.qos.logback.classic.Logger.ROOT_LOGGER_NAME);
    rootLogger.addAppender(mockAppender);
}

private void assertJobIsScheduled(final String matcherText) {
    verify(mockAppender).doAppend(argThat(new ArgumentMatcher() {
        @Override
        public boolean matches(final Object argument) {
            return ((LoggingEvent)argument).getFormattedMessage().contains(matcherText);
        }
    }));
}

You don't need to rely on hardcoded static global Loggers in your class implementation, you can provide a default logger in the default constructor and then use a specific constructor to set a reference to the provided logger.

class MyClassToTest {
    private final Logger logger;
    
    public MyClassToTest() {
      this(SomeStatic.logger);
    };
    
    MyClassToTest(Logger logger) {
      this.logger = logger;
    };
    
    public void someOperation() {
        logger.warn("warning message");
        // ...
    };
};

class MyClassToTestTest {
    
    @Test
    public warnCalled() {
        Logger loggerMock = mock(Logger.class);
        MyClassTest myClassToTest = new MyClassToTest(logger);
        myClassToTest.someOperation();
        verify(loggerMock).warn(anyString());
    };
}

Inspired by @RonaldBlaschke's solution, I came up with this:

public class Log4JTester extends ExternalResource {
    TestAppender appender;

    @Override
    protected void before() {
        appender = new TestAppender();
        final Logger rootLogger = Logger.getRootLogger();
        rootLogger.addAppender(appender);
    }

    @Override
    protected void after() {
        final Logger rootLogger = Logger.getRootLogger();
        rootLogger.removeAppender(appender);
    }

    public void assertLogged(Matcher<String> matcher) {
        for(LoggingEvent event : appender.events) {
            if(matcher.matches(event.getMessage())) {
                return;
            }
        }
        fail("No event matches " + matcher);
    }

    private static class TestAppender extends AppenderSkeleton {

        List<LoggingEvent> events = new ArrayList<LoggingEvent>();

        @Override
        protected void append(LoggingEvent event) {
            events.add(event);
        }

        @Override
        public void close() {

        }

        @Override
        public boolean requiresLayout() {
            return false;
        }
    }

}

... which allows you to do:

@Rule public Log4JTester logTest = new Log4JTester();

@Test
public void testFoo() {
     user.setStatus(Status.PREMIUM);
     logTest.assertLogged(
        stringContains("Note added to account: premium customer"));
}

You could probably make it use hamcrest in a smarter way, but I've left it at this.

Effectively you are testing a side-effect of a dependent class. For unit testing you need only to verify that

logger.info()

was called with the correct parameter. Hence use a mocking framework to emulate logger and that will allow you to test your own class's behaviour.

Using Jmockit (1.21) I was able to write this simple test. The test makes sure a specific ERROR message is called just once.

@Test
public void testErrorMessage() {
    final org.slf4j.Logger logger = org.slf4j.LoggerFactory.getLogger( MyConfig.class );

    new Expectations(logger) {{
        //make sure this error is happens just once.
        logger.error( "Something went wrong..." );
        times = 1;
    }};

    new MyTestObject().runSomethingWrong( "aaa" ); //SUT that eventually cause the error in the log.    
}

Note that in Log4J 2.x, the public interface org.apache.logging.log4j.Logger doesn't include the setAppender() and removeAppender() methods.

But if you're not doing anything too fancy, you should be able to cast it to the implementation class org.apache.logging.log4j.core.Logger, which does expose those methods.

Here's an example with Mockito and AssertJ:

// Import the implementation class rather than the API interface
import org.apache.logging.log4j.core.Logger;

// Cast logger to implementation class to get access to setAppender/removeAppender
Logger log = (Logger) LogManager.getLogger(MyClassUnderTest.class);

// Set up the mock appender, stubbing some methods Log4J needs internally
Appender appender = mock(Appender.class);
when(appender.getName()).thenReturn("Mock Appender");
when(appender.isStarted()).thenReturn(true);

log.addAppender(appender);
try {
    new MyClassUnderTest().doSomethingThatShouldLogAnError();
} finally {
    log.removeAppender(appender);
}

// Verify that we got an error with the expected message
ArgumentCaptor<LogEvent> logEventCaptor = ArgumentCaptor.forClass(LogEvent.class);
verify(appender).append(logEventCaptor.capture());
LogEvent logEvent = logEventCaptor.getValue();
assertThat(logEvent.getLevel()).isEqualTo(Level.ERROR);
assertThat(logEvent.getMessage().getFormattedMessage()).contains(expectedErrorMessage);

Another option is to mock Appender and verify if message was logged to this appender. Example for Log4j 1.2.x and mockito:

import static org.junit.Assert.assertEquals;
import static org.mockito.Mockito.mock;
import static org.mockito.Mockito.verify;

import org.apache.log4j.Appender;
import org.apache.log4j.Level;
import org.apache.log4j.Logger;
import org.apache.log4j.spi.LoggingEvent;
import org.junit.After;
import org.junit.Before;
import org.junit.Test;
import org.mockito.ArgumentCaptor;

public class MyTest {

    private final Appender appender = mock(Appender.class);
    private final Logger logger = Logger.getRootLogger();

    @Before
    public void setup() {
        logger.addAppender(appender);
    }

    @Test
    public void test() {
        // when
        Logger.getLogger(MyTest.class).info("Test");

        // then
        ArgumentCaptor<LoggingEvent> argument = ArgumentCaptor.forClass(LoggingEvent.class);
        verify(appender).doAppend(argument.capture());
        assertEquals(Level.INFO, argument.getValue().getLevel());
        assertEquals("Test", argument.getValue().getMessage());
        assertEquals("MyTest", argument.getValue().getLoggerName());
    }

    @After
    public void cleanup() {
        logger.removeAppender(appender);
    }
}

As mentioned from the others you could use a mocking framework. For this to make work you have to expose the logger in your class (although I would propably prefere to make it package private instead of creating a public setter).

The other solution is to create a fake logger by hand. You have to write the fake logger (more fixture code) but in this case I would prefer the enhanced readability of the tests against the saved code from the mocking framework.

I would do something like this:

class FakeLogger implements ILogger {
    public List<String> infos = new ArrayList<String>();
    public List<String> errors = new ArrayList<String>();

    public void info(String message) {
        infos.add(message);
    }

    public void error(String message) {
        errors.add(message);
    }
}

class TestMyClass {
    private MyClass myClass;        
    private FakeLogger logger;        

    @Before
    public void setUp() throws Exception {
        myClass = new MyClass();
        logger = new FakeLogger();
        myClass.logger = logger;
    }

    @Test
    public void testMyMethod() {
        myClass.myMethod(true);

        assertEquals(1, logger.infos.size());
    }
}