Log4j Custom Appender Properties File Issue - layout

Question

So I created a custom appender for Log4J that essentially does the same thing as the socketappender, but with UDP as opposed to TCP. However, I cannot get the log to display the date. I think that there might be an issue with the .properties file, but I'm not sure what. Especially since I know the .properties file is working to some extent because that is how the test program knows which appender to use. However, it is not using the layout specified in the .properties file. Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Appender code:
import java.io.IOException;
import java.net.DatagramPacket;
import java.net.DatagramSocket;
import java.net.InetAddress;
import java.net.SocketException;
import java.net.UnknownHostException;
import org.apache.log4j.AppenderSkeleton;
import org.apache.log4j.spi.LoggingEvent;
public /*static*/ class UDPAppender extends AppenderSkeleton {
#Override
protected void append(LoggingEvent event) {
String message = null;
event.getProperties();
StringBuilder formatedMessage = new StringBuilder();
formatedMessage.append("Level:");
formatedMessage.append(event.getLevel());
formatedMessage.append(", FILE:");
formatedMessage.append(event.getLocationInformation().getFileName());
formatedMessage.append(", Thread Id:");
formatedMessage.append(event.getLocationInformation().getLineNumber());
formatedMessage.append(", ERROR: ");
formatedMessage.append(event.getMessage().toString());
message = formatedMessage.toString();
DatagramSocket clientSocket = null;
//creating DatagramSocket to send logger info to socket; if not created, will print Stack Trace
try {
clientSocket = new DatagramSocket();
} catch (SocketException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
InetAddress IPAddress = null;
//get InetAddress for sending packet
try {
IPAddress = InetAddress.getByName("localhost");
} catch (UnknownHostException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
byte[] sendData = new byte[1024];
sendData = message.getBytes(); //convert from String to bytes so that message can be sent through datagrampacket
DatagramPacket sendPacket = new DatagramPacket(sendData, sendData.length, IPAddress, 27770); //address packet
try {
clientSocket.send(sendPacket); //send packet to the socket addressed above
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
clientSocket.close(); //need to close
}
public void close() {
}
public boolean requiresLayout() {
return true;
}
}
Test code:
import org.apache.log4j.*;
public class Tester {
private static final Logger log2 = Logger.getLogger("REMOTE");
public static void main(String[] args) {
//configures using the .properties file user creates
PropertyConfigurator.configure("log4j.properties");
log2.info("This is info message");
System.out.println("Logging complete");
//prints to console to let user know logging completed successfully
LogManager.shutdown();
//closes logs once logging is complete
}
}
.properties file:
log4j.logger.REMOTE=DEBUG, REMOTE
log4j.appender.REMOTE=custom.UDPAppender
log4j.appender.REMOTE.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.REMOTE.layout.ConversionPattern=%d{MMMM dd HH:mm:ss}, %d{yyyy} %F %L %m %t

Answer 1

I was actually able to just convert the time stamp to day/time with the following code:
long date = event.getTimeStamp();
Date dateObj = new Date(date);
DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("MM-dd-yyyy HH:mm:ss");
StringBuilder formatedMessage = new StringBuilder();
formatedMessage.append("Time:");
formatedMessage.append(df.format(dateObj));