Logging

At present, there are uses of System.out.println throughout the code base. These are being removed. Apache logging is used and should be throughout and consistently. Also, the following should NOT be used.

 log.debug("My output text");

The log statements should be wrapped with checking logic for appropriate warning LEVEL configuration. This is done like so.

 if (isDebugEnabled()) {
   log.debug("My output text will work if debug LEVEL logging is on.");
 }

When you're logging statements are wrapped, all logging can be turned on or off very easily in the configuration file(s). Before you can use a logger you will need to declare one at the top of each class like so.

 private static Log log = LogFactory.getLog(YourSpecificClassName.class);

Exception Handling

As we all know, the easy thing to do in a catch block is to use the printStackTrace method. Do not leave these. We are removing these and replacing them with something similar to this below.

 catch (IOException ioex) {
    log.error("Could not write to file", ioex);
 }

The getCause() method is used to pass the Throwable exception to the log. Any stacktrace output will be sent to the log. Please remember that sometimes a new Exception is thrown, possibly to support the method or a ResourceError is created. The ResourceError is handled like so.

 catch (IOException e)
 {
   log.error("Could not read from file", e);
   throw new ResourceError(e.getMessage() + " Please check server log.");
 }