NAME

Log::Log4perl::Appender::ScreenColoredLevels - Colorize messages according to level

SYNOPSIS

use Log::Log4perl qw(:easy);
Log::Log4perl->init(\ <<'EOT');
  log4perl.category = DEBUG, Screen
  log4perl.appender.Screen = \
      Log::Log4perl::Appender::ScreenColoredLevels
  log4perl.appender.Screen.layout = \
      Log::Log4perl::Layout::PatternLayout
  log4perl.appender.Screen.layout.ConversionPattern = \
      %d %F{1} %L> %m %n
EOT
  # Appears black
DEBUG "Debug Message";
  # Appears green
INFO  "Info Message";
  # Appears blue
WARN  "Warn Message";
  # Appears magenta
ERROR "Error Message";
  # Appears red
FATAL "Fatal Message";

DESCRIPTION

This appender acts like Log::Log4perl::Appender::Screen, except that it colorizes its output, based on the priority of the message sent.

You can configure the colors and attributes used for the different levels, by specifying them in your configuration:

log4perl.appender.Screen.color.TRACE=cyan
log4perl.appender.Screen.color.DEBUG=bold blue

You can also specify nothing, to indicate that level should not have coloring applied, which means the text will be whatever the default color for your terminal is. This is the default for debug messages.

log4perl.appender.Screen.color.DEBUG=

You can use any attribute supported by Term::ANSIColor as a configuration option.

log4perl.appender.Screen.color.FATAL=\
    bold underline blink red on_white

The commonly used colors and attributes are:

attributes

BOLD, DARK, UNDERLINE, UNDERSCORE, BLINK

colors

BLACK, RED, GREEN, YELLOW, BLUE, MAGENTA, CYAN, WHITE

background colors

ON_BLACK, ON_RED, ON_GREEN, ON_YELLOW, ON_BLUE, ON_MAGENTA, ON_CYAN, ON_WHITE

See Term::ANSIColor for a complete list, and information on which are supported by various common terminal emulators.

The default values for these options are:

Trace

Yellow

Debug

None (whatever the terminal default is)

Info

Green

Warn

Blue

Error

Magenta

Fatal

Red

The constructor new() takes an optional parameter "stderr", if set to a true value, the appender will log all levels to STDERR. If "stderr" is set to a false value, it will log all levels to STDOUT. Otherwise, "stderr" may be set to a hash, with a key for each "log4p_level" and a truthy value to dynamically use stderr. The default setting for "stderr" is 1, so all messages will be logged to STDERR by default.

# All messages/levels to STDERR
my $app = Log::Log4perl::Appender::Screen->new(
    stderr  => 1,
);
# Only ERROR and FATAL to STDERR (case-sensitive)
my $app = Log::Log4perl::Appender::Screen->new(
    stderr  => { ERROR => 1, FATAL => 1},
);

The constructor can also take an optional parameter "color", whose value is a hashref of color configuration options, any levels that are not included in the hashref will be set to their default values.

use Win32::Console::ANSI;

LICENSE

Copyright 2002-2026 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.