XSLT to convert log4j.xml config to logback.xml config

Logback is a modern logging framework widely used nowadays. It has a drop-in replacement for a log4j 1.2 (the previous favorite): logback-classic. But a little problem arises if you have an application which uses log4j and want to migrate it to logback: configuration.

log4j has two configuration formats: log4j.properties and log4j.xml. For the former, everything is fine: there is log4j.properties translator script.
But for log4j.xml there doesn't seem to be any convertion tool available, and logback.xml does not understand the unconverted log4j.xml files.
So here is an XSLT which allows to convert log4j.xml files to the corresponding logback.xml configurations.
And here is an example. We have the following log4j.xml file:

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <log4j:configuration xmlns:log4j="http://jakarta.apache.org/log4j/"> <appender name="default" class="org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender"> <param name="target" value="System.out"/> <layout class="org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout"> <param name="ConversionPattern" value="%d %t %p [%c] - %m%n"/> </layout> </appender> <appender name="log4jremote" class="org.apache.log4j.net.SocketAppender"> <param name="RemoteHost" value="10.0.1.10"/> <param name="Port" value="4712"/> <param name="ReconnectionDelay" value="10000"/> <layout class="org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout"> <param name="ConversionPattern" value="[my-host][%d{ISO8601}]%c{1}%n%m%n"/> </layout> <filter class="org.apache.log4j.varia.LevelRangeFilter"> <param name="LevelMin" value="ERROR"/> <param name="LevelMax" value="FATAL"/> </filter> </appender> <logger name="com.somepackage"> <level value="INFO"/> </logger> <root> <level value="INFO"/> <appender-ref ref="default"/> </root> </log4j:configuration>

Using Xalan to convert it:

java -cp xalan.jar:xercesImpl.jar:serializer.jar:xml-apis.jar org.apache.xalan.xslt.Process -IN log4j.xml -XSL log4j-to-logback.xsl -OUT logback.xml

And here is the result:

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><configuration scanPeriod="10 seconds" scan="true"> <appender name="default" class="ch.qos.logback.core.ConsoleAppender"> <target>System.out</target> <encoder> <pattern>%d %t %p [%c] - %m%n</pattern> </encoder> </appender> <appender name="log4jremote" class="ch.qos.logback.classic.net.SocketAppender"> <remoteHost>10.0.1.10</remoteHost> <port>4712</port> <reconnectionDelay>10000</reconnectionDelay> <!-- this is NOT needed tor this logger, so it is commented out --> <!-- <layout> <pattern>[my-host][%d{ISO8601}]%c{1}%n%m%n</pattern> </layout> --> <filter class="ch.qos.logback.classic.filter.ThresholdFilter"> <level>ERROR</level> </filter> </appender> <logger name="com.somepackage" level="INFO"/> <root level="INFO"> <appender-ref ref="default"/> </root> </configuration>

The script translates the basic loggers (console/email/file/syslog/socket).

Here is github repository: https://github.com/rpuch/log4j2logback