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Logging in Bonita components

Learn how to view and configure logging of Bonita components.

How components produce log messages

The components of Bonita have their own ways to produce logs, which are described below.

Bonita Engine

All the Engine services uses SLF4J in order to write log messages.

Bonita Portal

The Portal uses the Java Util Logging (JUL) directly to log messages.

Bonita Studio

The Studio uses a logging service provided by the Eclipse platform. Modification of the Studio logging configuration is not very common except for debugging the Studio itself.

The Bonita Studio provides direct access to the log written by the embedded Portal and Engine. You can access this log from the Bonita Studio Help menu Show Engine log option (Engine log also contains UI designer logs).

Logging configuration

Bonita Engine and Bonita Portal aka Bonita Runtime

Bonita Engine uses SLF4J to create the logs as well as some Bonita dependencies such as Quartz and Ehcache.

SLF4J is a facade for various logging frameworks, and a logging framework must be available as the back-end. By default, Bonita uses JUL (Java Util Logging) as a the back-end to SLF4J.

By default in the Bonita Runtime, all logs are sent to the JUL framework. To configure what is logged and where it is stored, edit the logging.properties file located in conf folder (see the Apache Tomcat logging documentation) of the Bonita Bundle.

For the Bonita Runtime embedded in the Bonita Studio, the JUL configuration file is located in the Studio installation folder under workspace/tomcat/conf. After editing this file, restart Bonita by going to the Server menu and selecting the Restart web server option.

Here is an example of the JUL configuration for the logger used in the example below:

# Set log level to "finest" for newly created connector
org.mycompany.connector.level = FINEST
# Set log level to "finest" for Groovy script
org.bonitasoft.groovy.script.level = FINEST

Bonita Studio

To change the Bonita Studio log level (usually to debug Studio), go to the Studio installation folder, configuration directory, and edit the config.ini file. You need to set the property eclipse.log.level to one of the following values: INFO, WARNING or ERROR.

How to include logging in your development on Bonita

When you write Groovy scripts or Java code to be included in a process (for example, to create a new connector implementation), logging is usually required. The recommended option is to use SLF4J in order to log messages. SLF4J is included in the Bonita dependencies so you can use it without adding extra dependencies. However, to get completion for SLF4J classes during development you need to add the slf4j-api jar file temporarily to your process dependencies (click Configure then choose Application dependencies).

This is an example of how to log debug information in a Groovy script. Note that we recommend that you use a logger name that starts with "org.bonitasoft", so that the default Bonita logging configuration is applied to your logger. Also, ending your logger name with a name similar to the Groovy script will be helpful to identify source of the message.

import org.slf4j.Logger;
import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;

Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger("org.bonitasoft.groovy.script.my_int_init_script");
logger.debug("Set initial value of process variable using Groovy script");
return Integer.valueOf(3 + 5);

This is an example of how to use logging in a connector:

private static final Logger LOGGER = LoggerFactory.getLogger(SumImpl.class);

@Override
protected void executeBusinessLogic() throws ConnectorException {
    LOGGER.debug("Trying to sum {} and {}.", getIntegerA(), getIntegerB());
    int sum = getIntegerA() + getIntegerB();
    LOGGER.debug("The sum is: {}", sum);
    setSum(sum);
}

View log content

Bonita Studio

In Bonita Studio you have access to two log files:

  • The Studio log file includes information about Studio execution. Look at this file if you see incorrect behavior of the Studio. To view the file, go to the Help menu and choose Show Studio log. The file is located in the workspace/.metadata folder and is named .log.

  • The Engine and Portal log file receives all log messages produced by the Bonita Platform embedded in the Studio. When you test your processes by running them from the Studio you will find valuable debugging information in this file. To view the file, go to the Help menu and choose Show Engine log. The file is located in workspace/tomcat/log and is named bonita-yyyy-mm-dd.log.

Bonita Runtime

Packages

Logs are configured via the class package names and the main packages are org.bonitasoft and com.bonitasoft for subscription edition.
Change these packages value to change the Bonita global log level.

Bonita Bundle

On a Bonita bundle, you can configure the log level and you can access the log files directly, in BUNDLE_HOME/logs. Each file name includes the date when the file was created. Log files:

  • bonita.date.log is the Bonita log file.