32.7. Controlling logging

To control logging in Neo4j embedded, use the Neo4j embedded logging framework.

Neo4j embedded provides logging via its own org.neo4j.logging.Log layer, and does not natively use any existing Java logging framework. All logging events produced by Neo4j have a name, a level and a message. The name is a FQCN (fully qualified class name).

Neo4j uses the following log levels:

ERROR

For serious errors that are almost always fatal

WARN

For events that are serious, but not fatal

INFO

Informational events

DEBUG

Debugging events

To enable logging, an implementation of org.neo4j.logging.LogProvider must be provided to the GraphDatabaseFactory, as follows:

LogProvider logProvider = new MyCustomLogProvider( output );
graphDb = new GraphDatabaseFactory().setUserLogProvider( logProvider ).newEmbeddedDatabase( DB_PATH );

Neo4j also includes a binding for SLF4J, which is available in the neo4j-slf4j library jar. This can be obtained via Maven:

<project>
...
 <dependencies>
  <dependency>
   <groupId>org.neo4j</groupId>
   <artifactId>neo4j-slf4j</artifactId>
   <version>3.1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
    <artifactId>slf4j-api</artifactId>
  </dependency>
  ...
 </dependencies>
...
</project>

To use this binding, simply pass an instance of org.neo4j.logging.slf4j.Slf4jLogProvider to the GraphDatabaseFactory, as follows:

graphDb = new GraphDatabaseFactory().setUserLogProvider( new Slf4jLogProvider() ).newEmbeddedDatabase( DB_PATH );

All log output can then be controlled via SLF4J configuration.