I just did a POC to use decanter as a distributed logging system for
spring boot applications.
My first approach was to use the log4j socket appender to log into a
local (but separate process) decanter-agent that then forwards to kafka.
A central decanter server would then pick up the logs and store them
into ES. The disadvantage was that each node needs a local
decanter-agent which makes the packaging for the cloud more difficult.
So I looked into a way to embed decanter into spring boot and found
felix connect. It allows to pick some bundles from the normal classpath
and start them in a partial OSGi container.
It seems to be good enough to nicely host decanter and the kafka
appender. I created a custom logback appender class for spring boot that
forwards all logs into the embedded decanter instance.
To make it easy to use I packaged this as a spring boot starter. So
people only have to add the dependency and configure their logging to
use the new decanter appender.
As this might be of general interest I wanted to discuss if we want to
add an official spring boot integration for decanter. It could
significantly widen then audience for decanter.
Another thing to discuss is if we want to provide docker examples and
maybe even official docker images for decanter.
Christian
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Christian Schneider
http://www.liquid-reality.de
Open Source Architect
http://www.talend.com
