Apache Log4j 2

Apache Log4j 2 is a common logging framework for Java applications. If your application already uses Log4j 2, you can add an HTTP appender and send structured logs directly to a Parseable dataset.

This path is useful when you want application logs without running a separate node-level agent. For larger Kubernetes or VM deployments, you can still use Fluent Bit, Fluentd, Logstash, or the OpenTelemetry Collector to collect logs outside the application.

Prerequisites

Make sure you have a Parseable ingest endpoint, an API key that can write to the target dataset, and a dataset name for these logs. In the examples below, the dataset is java-app-logs.

Configure Log4j 2

Add an HTTP appender to your log4j2.xml file. The appender sends JSON records to Parseable and uses headers to set the API key and dataset.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Configuration status="WARN">
  <Appenders>
    <Http name="Parseable"
          url="http://<parseable-ingestor-endpoint>:8000/api/v1/ingest"
          method="POST">
      <Property name="Content-Type" value="application/json" />
      <Property name="X-API-Key" value="<parseable-api-key>" />
      <Property name="X-P-Stream" value="java-app-logs" />
      <JsonLayout compact="true"
                  eventEol="true"
                  properties="true"
                  stacktraceAsString="true" />
    </Http>

    <Console name="Console" target="SYSTEM_OUT">
      <PatternLayout pattern="%d{ISO8601} %-5p %c{1} - %m%n" />
    </Console>
  </Appenders>

  <Loggers>
    <Root level="info">
      <AppenderRef ref="Console" />
      <AppenderRef ref="Parseable" />
    </Root>
  </Loggers>
</Configuration>

Replace <parseable-ingestor-endpoint> with the host that receives ingestion traffic, and replace <parseable-api-key> with an API key that has access to write to java-app-logs.

Verify Logs

Start the Java application and emit a few log lines. In Parseable, open the java-app-logs dataset and check that the latest events include fields such as loggerName, level, message, thread, and timeMillis.

If logs do not appear, check the application logs for HTTP appender errors. Most issues come from an unreachable ingest endpoint, an API key without write access, or a missing X-P-Stream header.