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To visualize asynchronous log output, I am looking for a log4j/net compatible debug viewer with a split view that shows log lines selectively on the left or right. The selection should be based on a set of loggers or string patterns.

Preferably, lines on the opposite sides should be empty and the views' scrolling synchronized.

Have you seen something similar, or even know another, better way to visualize log output of asynchronous systems?

Anthony Mastrean
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Armin
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1 Answers1

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So you want an application capable of tailing a log file and applying a filter on the contents of each line. And for "side by side" you just need to be able to open two instances. I've used Kiwi Log Viewer for all of these purposes. You can append to a syslog server if that's interesting for you or just point the viewer at your log file.

To support the kind of filtering, matching, and searching you want, you'll need to output various parameters in your appender layout. For instance, to provide datetime, thread, level, and logger in your output (and therefore, available for searching/filtering)

<appender ...>
    <layout ...>
        <conversionPattern value="%date [%thread] %-5level - %message%newline" />
    </layout>
</appender>

A couple of other applications I have not tried, but appear to have similar features are

Anthony Mastrean
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  • Thank you Anthony. +1 for the Kiwi Log Viewer, but it does not actually solve the problem. I'd expect the debugger views to be chronologically synchronized, so that one could go back in time and see what happened in each of them. – Armin Jun 16 '11 at 08:58