Blind Squirrel

One of the huge pains about writing AJAX applications is handling logging and debugging. Many Java developers use log4j, so something similar would be immensely beneficial. Of course, there is a SourceForge project called log4ajax that attempts to solve this very problem. Eric Spiegelberg wrote an article on today.java.net describing possible usages of log4ajax for both client and server side logging.

Unfortunately, as someone pointed out in the comments for the article, log4ajax isn't really deserving of the log4j appellation. Log4j supports an abstraction between the act of logging something and the processes of actually filtering, formatting and storing the message. Furthermore, the technique he outlined for server-side logging seems overly simplistic. While Mr. Spiegelberg notes that buffering would improve performance, it still seems like log4ajax is not a robust implementation of log4j in an AJAX world. Instead, log4ajax is merely an example of what could be possible, at least in a Panglossian world.