Cleaning noise out of Java stack traces

Question

My Java stack traces have a lot of entries that I don't care about, showing method invocation going through proxies and Spring reflection methods and stuff like that. It can make it pretty hard to pick out the part of the stack trace that's actually from my code. Ruby on Rails includes a "stack trace cleaner" where you can specify a list of stack trace patterns to omit from printed stack traces - what's the best way to do something like that, universally, for Java?

It'd be best if this worked everywhere, including in the Eclipse jUnit runner.

Ah yes, the "stack trace from hell" according to Cay Horstmann: https://plus.google.com/+CayHorstmann/posts/YAwGCVpLXgH — Philip Durbin, Nov 22 '15 at 14:13
It would be great if there was a command line too. That would make looking through `catalina.log` less cumbersome. — Sridhar Sarnobat, Nov 06 '19 at 20:13
@gaurav I think this "Stack Trace From Hell" is the same (but I don't remember): http://horstmann.com/unblog/2006-06-07/netbeans-jsf.html — Philip Durbin, Jan 11 '20 at 13:51

score 17 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

17

intellij-idea allows customizable stack trace folding, especially useful with dynamic languages.

_{(source: jetbrains.com)}

and an Analyzing external stack traces tool.

I can imagine general tool/filter working on logging framework (like logback or log4j) level. I don't think there is any general support for that, but I think it is a great idea to implement this. I will have a look, maybe it is not that much work.

UPDATE: I implemented filtering irrelevant stack trace lines in logs for logback, also follow LBCLASSIC-325.

edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

Community

1
1

answered Mar 07 '12 at 17:58

Tomasz Nurkiewicz

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unfortunately, the intelliJ plugin is not compatible anymore. (at least with 03/17 ubuntu build) – phil294 Jun 18 '17 at 11:34

Michael Gantman · Answer 2 · 2019-06-04T12:46:25.063

I actually wrote an open source library MgntUtils (available at Github and maven central) that contains several utilities. Here is a link to an article about the library: MgntUtils Open Source Java library. One of the utilities is a general purpose stacktrace filter that I used extensively and found it very useful. The class is called TextUtils and it has method getStacktrace() with several overridden signatures. It takes a Throwable instance and allows to set a package prefix of the packages that are relevant. Let's say your company's code always resides in packages that start with "com.plain.*" So you set such a prefix and do this

logger.info(TextUtils.getStacktrace(e, true, "com.plain."));

this will filter out very smartly all the useless parts of the trace leaving you with very concise stacktrace. Also I found it very convinient to pre-set the prefix and then just use the convinience method

TextUtils.getStacktrace(e);

It will do the same. To preset the prefix just use method

setRelevantPackage("com.plain.");

Also if you use Spring environment you can add the following segment to your Spring configuration and then you all set:

<bean class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.MethodInvokingFactoryBean">
  <property name="targetClass" value="com.mgnt.utils.TextUtils"/>
  <property name="targetMethod" value="setRelevantPackage"/>
  <property name="arguments" value="com.plain."/>
</bean>

The library comes with well written (I hope) Javadoc that explains everything in detail. But here is a little teaser: you will get a following stacktrace:

at com.plain.BookService.listBooks()
at com.plain.BookService$$FastClassByCGLIB$$e7645040.invoke()
at net.sf.cglib.proxy.MethodProxy.invoke()
...
at com.plain.LoggingAspect.logging()
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0()
...
at com.plain.BookService$$EnhancerByCGLIB$$7cb147e4.listBooks()
at com.plain.web.BookController.listBooks()

instead of

at com.plain.BookService.listBooks()
at com.plain.BookService$$FastClassByCGLIB$$e7645040.invoke()
at net.sf.cglib.proxy.MethodProxy.invoke()
at org.springframework.aop.framework.Cglib2AopProxy$CglibMethodInvocation.invokeJoinpoint()
at org.springframework.aop.framework.ReflectiveMethodInvocation.proceed()
at org.springframework.aop.aspectj.MethodInvocationProceedingJoinPoint.proceed()
at com.plain.LoggingAspect.logging()
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0()
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke()
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke()
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke()
at org.springframework.aop.aspectj.AbstractAspectJAdvice.invokeAdviceMethodWithGivenArgs()
at org.springframework.aop.aspectj.AbstractAspectJAdvice.invokeAdviceMethod()
at org.springframework.aop.aspectj.AspectJAroundAdvice.invoke()
at org.springframework.aop.framework.ReflectiveMethodInvocation.proceed()
at org.springframework.aop.interceptor.AbstractTraceInterceptor.invoke()
at org.springframework.aop.framework.ReflectiveMethodInvocation.proceed()
at org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionInterceptor.invoke()
at org.springframework.aop.framework.ReflectiveMethodInvocation.proceed()
at org.springframework.aop.interceptor.ExposeInvocationInterceptor.invoke()
at org.springframework.aop.framework.ReflectiveMethodInvocation.proceed()
at org.springframework.aop.framework.Cglib2AopProxy$DynamicAdvisedInterceptor.intercept()
at com.plain.BookService$$EnhancerByCGLIB$$7cb147e4.listBooks()
at com.plain.web.BookController.listBooks()

great library! There's a similar feature in log4j2 to exclude packages from the stacktrace. — Gaurav, Nov 13 '19 at 09:26
@gaurav - First of all thanks. Also, I would be very interested in more detailed feedback on the library if you have anything to say about it. Please look me up on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-gantman-9661521/) and if you can write me a bit more, please — Michael Gantman, Nov 13 '19 at 09:35

Arne Burmeister · Accepted Answer · 2012-03-08T07:50:19.837

13

eclipse has a preference Stack trace filter patterns (look at java > junit or search for stacktrace in the preferences). You can ignore packages (also with wildcards), classes or methods. Does work for direct Test calls (via Run as junit Test), not for commandline runs like ant or maven.

edited Mar 08 '12 at 07:50

answered Mar 07 '12 at 18:27

Arne Burmeister

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Thanks for this! This definitely solves my jUnit plugin problem. – bhollis Mar 07 '12 at 21:17

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 19 '14 at 08:05

For log4j:

package package1;

public class FilteringThrowableRenderer implements ThrowableRenderer {
    private static final String PACKAGES_SEPARATOR = "\\s*,\\s*";

    private final static String TRACE_PREFIX = "\tat ";

    private static final String FILTERED_WARNING = " [Stacktrace is filtered]";

    ThrowableRenderer defaultRenderer = new EnhancedThrowableRenderer();

    List<String> skippedLinePrefixes;

    public FilteringThrowableRenderer() {
        String skippedPackagesString = "java,org"; // TODO: move it to config
        String[] skippedPackages =
            skippedPackagesString.trim().split(PACKAGES_SEPARATOR);
        skippedLinePrefixes = new ArrayList<String>(skippedPackages.length);
        for (String packageName : skippedPackages) {
            skippedLinePrefixes.add(TRACE_PREFIX + packageName);
        }
    }

    @Override
    public String[] doRender(Throwable throwable) {
        String[] initialTrace = defaultRenderer.doRender(throwable);
        if (!skippedLinePrefixes.isEmpty()) {
            List<String> result = new ArrayList<String>(initialTrace.length);

            boolean filtered = false;
            trace: for (String element : initialTrace) {
                for (String skippedLinePrefix : skippedLinePrefixes) {
                    if (element.startsWith(skippedLinePrefix)) {
                        filtered = true;
                        continue trace;
                    }
                }
                result.add(element);
            }
            if (filtered && result.size() > 0) {
                result.set(0, result.get(0) + FILTERED_WARNING);
            }
            return result.toArray(new String[result.size()]);
        } else {
            return initialTrace;
        }
    }
}

to enable it with code:

ThrowableRendererSupport loggerRepository =
    (ThrowableRendererSupport) LogManager.getLoggerRepository();
loggerRepository.setThrowableRenderer(new FilteringThrowableRenderer());

or with log4j.properties:

log4j.throwableRenderer=package1.FilteringThrowableRenderer

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 20 '16 at 20:17

1

This plugin's pretty nice

https://marketplace.eclipse.org/content/grep-console

Just a generalized grep formatting utility for the Eclipse console, so no additional dependencies. I format all my irrelevant noise to grey text.

answered Jun 20 '16 at 20:17

Magnus

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score 1 · Answer 6 · edited Feb 06 '17 at 16:25

1

Not exactly what you are looking for (and, to the best of my knowledge, there is no universal solution for your problem, at least I've never heard of a famous tool to clean and extract info from Java stacktraces).

Anyway, this post from July, 05, 2011 at Faux' Blog describes a Java Agent in early stages whose purpose is to enrich (and not filter) stack traces. It evens provide a link to a git repository with a mavenized project. Maybe you can go from here, tweak his code and roll your own solution (who knows, maybe even start an open source project).

edited Feb 06 '17 at 16:25

karsten314159

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answered Mar 07 '12 at 18:10

Anthony Accioly

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I've seen that, but was hoping I wouldn't have to write my own. Seems like the way to go though. – bhollis Mar 07 '12 at 21:17

Cleaning noise out of Java stack traces

6 Answers6

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