Dropwizard is a collection of Java tools that relies on sane defaults to simplify the creation of RESTful applications serving content over a HTTP API. We’re using it as part of an effort to break a monolithic app into smaller microservices. Most of its configuration is straightforward and well-documented; however, figuring out how to log HTTP access to a file was a pain. It’s not that the configuration changes are particularly difficult, just that there’s a ton of outdated or just plain wrong documentation out there!

We added the following to our YAML configuration file:

server:
  requestLog:
    appenders:
      - type: file
        currentLogFilename: /var/log/our-app/access.log
        archivedLogFilenamePattern: /var/log/our-app/accedd-%d.log.gz

This will store Common Log Format entries in /var/log/our-app/access.log, mirroring the entries you’d typically see in your console when running Dropwizard in development mode. Not difficult, just often incorrectly documented!