Tony has provided an excellent answer here after I posted the question.
http://old.nabble.com/Enable-Debugging-Mode-Programmatically--td32961424.html
This is very helpful when you are trying to figure out why LogBack doesn't work in certain cases. I opted to use the first way for my initialization code.
Keep in mind that this is when you choose not to use a config file like in my kind of use case.
From: tony19
There are a couple ways:
1) Use StatusPrinter.printInCaseOfErrorsOrWarnings(loggerContext)
OR
2) Load hard-coded string of configuration XML w/configuration.debug set to 'true':
static final String LOGBACK_XML =
"<configuration debug='true'>" +
" <appender name='FILE' class='ch.qos.logback.core.RollingFileAppender'>" +
" <file>foo.log</file>" +
" <append>true</append>" +
" <encoder>" +
" <pattern>%-4relative [%thread] %-5level %logger{35} - %msg%n</pattern>" +
" </encoder>" +
" </appender>" +
" <root level='INFO'>" +
" <appender-ref ref='FILE' />" +
" </root>" +
"</configuration>"
;
static public void configLogback() {
LoggerContext lc = (LoggerContext) LoggerFactory.getILoggerFactory();
try {
JoranConfigurator configurator = new JoranConfigurator();
configurator.setContext(lc);
lc.reset();
configurator.doConfigure(new ByteArrayInputStream(LOGBACK_XML.getBytes()));
} catch (JoranException je) {
je.printStackTrace();
}
// you can also print the errors/warning explicitly (instead of debug='true' in xml)
//StatusPrinter.printInCaseOfErrorsOrWarnings(lc);
}