Appender::File(3pm)					User Contributed Perl Documentation				       Appender::File(3pm)

NAME

       Log::Log4perl::Appender::File - Log to file

SYNOPSIS

	   use Log::Log4perl::Appender::File;

	   my $app = Log::Log4perl::Appender::File->new(
	     filename  => 'file.log',
	     mode      => 'append',
	     autoflush => 1,
	     umask     => 0222,
	   );

	   $file->log(message => "Log me
");

DESCRIPTION

       This is a simple appender for writing to a file.

       The "log()" method takes a single scalar. If a newline character should terminate the message, it has to be added explicitely.

       Upon destruction of the object, the filehandle to access the file is flushed and closed.

       If you want to switch over to a different logfile, use the "file_switch($newfile)" method which will first close the old file handle and
       then open a one to the new file specified.

   OPTIONS
       filename
	   Name of the log file.

       mode
	   Messages will be append to the file if $mode is set to the string "append". Will clobber the file if set to "clobber". If it is "pipe",
	   the file will be understood as executable to pipe output to. Default mode is "append".

       autoflush
	   "autoflush", if set to a true value, triggers flushing the data out to the file on every call to "log()". "autoflush" is on by default.

       syswrite
	   "syswrite", if set to a true value, makes sure that the appender uses syswrite() instead of print() to log the message. "syswrite()"
	   usually maps to the operating system's "write()" function and makes sure that no other process writes to the same log file while
	   "write()" is busy.  Might safe you from having to use other syncronisation measures like semaphores (see: Synchronized appender).

       umask
	   Specifies the "umask" to use when creating the file, determining the file's permission settings.  If set to 0222 (default), new files
	   will be created with "rw-r--r--" permissions.  If set to 0000, new files will be created with "rw-rw-rw-" permissions.

       owner
	   If set, specifies that the owner of the newly created log file should be different from the effective user id of the running process.
	   Only makes sense if the process is running as root.	Both numerical user ids and user names are acceptable.

       group
	   If set, specifies that the group of the newly created log file should be different from the effective group id of the running process.
	   Only makes sense if the process is running as root.	Both numerical group ids and group names are acceptable.

       utf8
	   If you're printing out Unicode strings, the output filehandle needs to be set into ":utf8" mode:

	       my $app = Log::Log4perl::Appender::File->new(
		 filename  => 'file.log',
		 mode	   => 'append',
		 utf8	   => 1,
	       );

       binmode
	   To manipulate the output filehandle via "binmode()", use the binmode parameter:

	       my $app = Log::Log4perl::Appender::File->new(
		 filename  => 'file.log',
		 mode	   => 'append',
		 binmode   => ":utf8",
	       );

	   A setting of ":utf8" for "binmode" is equivalent to specifying the "utf8" option (see above).

       recreate
	   Normally, if a file appender logs to a file and the file gets moved to a different location (e.g. via "mv"), the appender's open file
	   handle will automatically follow the file to the new location.

	   This may be undesirable. When using an external logfile rotator, for example, the appender should create a new file under the old name
	   and start logging into it. If the "recreate" option is set to a true value, "Log::Log4perl::Appender::File" will do exactly that. It
	   defaults to false. Check the "recreate_check_interval" option for performance optimizations with this feature.

       recreate_check_interval
	   In "recreate" mode, the appender has to continuously check if the file it is logging to is still in the same location. This check is
	   fairly expensive, since it has to call "stat" on the file name and figure out if its inode has changed. Doing this with every call to
	   "log" can be prohibitively expensive. Setting it to a positive integer value N will only check the file every N seconds. It defaults to
	   30.

	   This obviously means that the appender will continue writing to a moved file until the next check occurs, in the worst case this will
	   happen "recreate_check_interval" seconds after the file has been moved or deleted. If this is undesirable, setting
	   "recreate_check_interval" to 0 will have the appender check the file with every call to "log()".

       recreate_check_signal
	   In "recreate" mode, if this option is set to a signal name (e.g. "USR1"), the appender will recreate a missing logfile when it receives
	   the signal. It uses less resources than constant polling. The usual limitation with perl's signal handling apply.  Check the FAQ for
	   using this option with the log rotating utility "newsyslog".

       recreate_pid_write
	   The popular log rotating utility "newsyslog" expects a pid file in order to send the application a signal when its logs have been
	   rotated. This option expects a path to a file where the pid of the currently running application gets written to.  Check the FAQ for
	   using this option with the log rotating utility "newsyslog".

       create_at_logtime
	   The file appender typically creates its logfile in its constructor, i.e.  at Log4perl "init()" time. This is desirable for most use
	   cases, because it makes sure that file permission problems get detected right away, and not after days/weeks/months of operation when
	   the appender suddenly needs to log something and fails because of a problem that was obvious at startup.

	   However, there are rare use cases where the file shouldn't be created at Log4perl "init()" time, e.g. if the appender can't be used by
	   the current user although it is defined in the configuration file. If you set "create_at_logtime" to a true value, the file appender
	   will try to create the file at log time. Note that this setting lets permission problems sit undetected until log time, which might be
	   undesirable.

       header_text
	   If you want Log4perl to print a header into every newly opened (or re-opened) logfile, set "header_text" to either a string or a
	   subroutine returning a string. If the message doesn't have a newline, a newline at the end of the header will be provided.

       Design and implementation of this module has been greatly inspired by Dave Rolsky's "Log::Dispatch" appender framework.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

       Copyright 2002-2009 by Mike Schilli <m@perlmeister.com> and Kevin Goess <cpan@goess.org>.

       This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

perl v5.10.1							    2010-07-21						       Appender::File(3pm)