Bug 3736 – log4j timestamps are not ISO 8601 compatible

Bug 3736 - log4j timestamps are not ISO 8601 compatible

Summary:

log4j timestamps are not ISO 8601 compatible

Status:	RESOLVED FIXED

Product:	Java WS Core
Component:	globus_wsrf_core
Version:	unspecified
Platform:	All All

Importance:	P3 enhancement
Target Milestone:	---
Assigned To:	Jarek Gawor

URL:
Keywords:

Depends on:
Blocks:
	Show dependency tree / graph

Reported:	2005-09-09 11:14 by Jens-S. Vöckler
Modified:	2006-10-26 16:19 (History)

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Description From Jens-S. Vöckler 2005-09-09 11:14:28

Hi, 

the log4j produces timestamps like

  2005-09-08 22:35:56,101 INFO  exec.StateMachine ...

which are neither ISO 8601 compliant nor unambigous. There are three issues with
the time stamp above:

[1] It is ambigious. If I were to parse a logfile that was produced elsewhere in
the world, without time zone identification, it is hopeless. ISO 8601 says to
use either a zone offset for local time, or Z for UTC, if the stamps are to be
unambigous.

[2] The date and time of a timestamp are separated by a "T" according to ISO
8601. The wording can also to be read - in certain cases - that "T" can be
omitted. However, a space as separator between date and time is not permitted AFAIK.

[3] The separator between seconds and subseconds has to be "." (period). This is
supposedly fixed in newer releases of log4j.

Valid formats for ISO 8601 time stamps include the XML schema type xs::dateTime.
Examples can be seen using GNU's "date -Isec". More examples include:

20020523T140427-0500
20020523190427Z
2002-05-23T14:04:27-05:00
2002-05-23T19:04:27Z
20020523T140427.166-0500
20020523190427.166Z
2002-05-23T14:04:27.166-05:00
2002-05-23T19:04:27.166Z

I would pick example 7/8.

------- Comment #1 From Jarek Gawor 2005-09-12 10:45:35 -------

How about this format: '2002-05-23 14:04:27.166-05:00'?

------- Comment #2 From Jens-S. Vöckler 2005-09-12 11:03:20 -------

AFAI understand it, and I may read it wrong, you can s/T//, but not
s/T/ /. Thus, replacing "T" with space " " would not be permissable. See [2] in
original request. 

However, one may get away on a technicality (have to re-read the draft I have
here somewhere) by claiming that the Jarek's version is two timestamps, one date
and one time.

Note: Dropping the T is often applied to the concise (no "-" in date, no ":" in
time) format. I agree that s/T/ / is more readible. We can check with XML schema
what inputs xs::dateTime will accept.

------- Comment #3 From Jarek Gawor 2006-10-26 15:52:59 -------

Given the discussion on gt-dev (initial thread:
http://www.globus.org/mail_archive/gt-dev/2006/10/msg00044.html) we decided on
the following format:

YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss,sss[+-]hh:mm

Example:

2002-05-23T14:04:27,166-05:00

------- Comment #4 From Jarek Gawor 2006-10-26 16:19:02 -------

Updated the log4j configuration file to print out the timestamp in the agreed
format. Changes commited to trunk.