| Defines the interface for handling log messages.
It is not usually necessary for users to create implementations of this interface, as
the
LoggerProvider interface contains several predefined instances which provide the most commonly required Logger implementations.
By default, logging is configured automatically according to the algorithm described in the static
Config.LoggerProvider property.
An instance of a class that implements this interface is used by calling the
Source.setLogger(Logger) method on the relevant
Source object.
Four logging levels are defined in this interface.
The logging level is specified only by the use of different method names, there is no class or type defining the levels.
This makes the code required to wrap other logging frameworks much simpler and more efficient.
The four logging levels are:
IMPLEMENTATION NOTE: Ideally the java.util.logging.Logger class could have been used as a basis for logging, even if used to define a wrapper
around other logging frameworks.
This would have avoided the need to define yet another logging interface, but because java.util.logging.Logger is implemented very poorly,
it is quite tricky to extend it as a wrapper.
Other logging wrapper frameworks such as SLF4J or
Jakarta Commons Logging provide good logging interfaces, but to avoid
introducing dependencies it was decided to create this new interface.
See Also: Config.LoggerProvider |