Appender::File(3)

NAME
Log::Log4perl::Appender::File - Log to file

SYNOPSIS
    use Log::Log4perl::Appender::File;

    my $app = Log::Log4perl::Appender::File->new(
      filename  => 'file.log',
      mode      => 'append',
      autoflush => 1,
      umask     => 0222,
    );

    $file->log(message => "Log me\n");

DESCRIPTION
This is a simple appender for writing to a file.

The "log()" method takes a single scalar. If a newline character should terminate the message, it has to be added explicitely.

Upon destruction of the object, the filehandle to access the file is flushed and closed.

If you want to switch over to a different logfile, use the "file_switch($newfile)" method which will first close the old file handle and then open a one to the new file specified.

  OPTIONS

filename
    Name of the log file.

mode
    Messages will be append to the file if $mode is set to the string "append". Will clobber the file if set to "clobber". If it is "pipe", the file will be understood as executable to pipe output to. Default mode is "append".

autoflush
    "autoflush", if set to a true value, triggers flushing the data out to the file on every call to "log()". "autoflush" is on by default.

umask
    Specifies the "umask" to use when creating the file, determining the file's permission settings. If set to 0222 (default), new files will be created with "rw-r--r--" permissions. If set to 0000, new files will be created with "rw-rw-rw-" permissions.

owner
    If set, specifies that the owner of the newly created log file should be different from the effective user id of the running process. Only makes sense if the process is running as root. Both numerical user ids and user names are acceptable.

group
    If set, specifies that the group of the newly created log file should be different from the effective group id of the running process. Only makes sense if the process is running as root. Both numerical group ids and group names are acceptable.

utf8
    If you're printing out Unicode strings, the output filehandle needs to be set into ":utf8" mode:

        my $app = Log::Log4perl::Appender::File->new(
          filename  => 'file.log',
          mode      => 'append',
          utf8      => 1,
        );

binmode
    To manipulate the output filehandle via "binmode()", use the binmode parameter:

        my $app = Log::Log4perl::Appender::File->new(
          filename  => 'file.log',
          mode      => 'append',
          binmode   => ":utf8",
        );

    A setting of ":utf8" for "binmode" is equivalent to specifying the "utf8" option (see above).

recreate
    Normally, if a file appender logs to a file and the file gets moved to a different location (e.g. via "mv"), the appender's open file handle will automatically follow the file to the new location.

    This may be undesirable. When using an external logfile rotator, for example, the appender should create a new file under the old name and start logging into it. If the "recreate" option is set to a true value, "Log::Log4perl::Appender::File" will do exactly that. It defaults to false. Check the "recreate_check_interval" option for performance optimizations with this feature.

recreate_check_interval
    In "recreate" mode, the appender has to continuously check if the file it is logging to is still in the same location. This check is fairly expensive, since it has to call "stat" on the file name and figure out if its inode has changed. Doing this with every call to "log" can be prohibitively expensive. Setting it to a positive integer value N will only check the file every N seconds. It defaults to 30.

    This obviously means that the appender will continue writing to a moved file until the next check occurs, in the worst case this will happen "recreate_check_interval" seconds after the file has been moved or deleted. If this is undesirable, setting "recreate_check_interval" to 0 will have the appender appender check the file with every call to "log()".

recreate_signal
    In "recreate" mode, if this option is set to a signal name (e.g. "USR1"), the appender will recreate a missing logfile when it receives the signal. It uses less resources than constant polling. The usual limitation with perl's signal handling apply. Check the FAQ for using this option with the log rotating utility "newsyslog".

recreate_pid_write
    The popular log rotating utility "newsyslog" expects a pid file in order to send the application a signal when its logs have been rotated. This option expects a path to a file where the pid of the currently running application gets written to. Check the FAQ for using this option with the log rotating utility "newsyslog".

Design and implementation of this module has been greatly inspired by Dave Rolsky's "Log::Dispatch" appender framework.

AUTHOR
Mike Schilli <log4perl@perlmeister.com>, 2003, 2005