Logging in MSAL for Java

Article
07/16/2024

The Microsoft Authentication Library (MSAL) apps generate log messages that can help diagnose issues. An app can configure logging with a few lines of code, and have custom control over the level of detail and whether or not personal and organizational data is logged. We recommend you create an MSAL logging implementation and provide a way for users to submit logs when they have authentication issues.

Logging levels

MSAL provides several levels of logging detail:

LogAlways: No level filtering is done on this log level. Log messages of all levels will be logged.
Critical: Logs that describe an unrecoverable application or system crash, or a catastrophic failure that requires immediate attention.
Error: Indicates something has gone wrong and an error was generated. Used for debugging and identifying problems.
Warning: There hasn't necessarily been an error or failure, but are intended for diagnostics and pinpointing problems.
Informational: MSAL will log events intended for informational purposes not necessarily intended for debugging.
Verbose (Default): MSAL logs the full details of library behavior.

Note

Not all log levels are available for all MSAL SDKs.

Personal and organizational data

By default, the MSAL logger doesn't capture any highly sensitive personal or organizational data. The library provides the option to enable logging personal and organizational data if you decide to do so.

The following sections provide more details about MSAL error logging for your application.

MSAL for Java logging

MSAL for Java allows you to use the logging library that you're already using with your app, as long as it's compatible with Simple Logging Facade for Java (SLF4J). MSAL for Java uses the SLF4J as a simple abstraction for various logging frameworks, such as java.util.logging, Logback and Log4j. SLF4J allows the user to plug in the desired logging framework at deployment time and automatically binds to Logback at deployment time. MSAL logs will be written to the console. This article shows how to enable MSAL4J logging using the logback framework in a Spring Boot web application.

To implement logging, include the logback package in pom.xml.

<dependency>
    <groupId>ch.qos.logback</groupId>
    <artifactId>logback-classic</artifactId>
    <version>1.2.3</version>
</dependency>

Navigate to the resources folder, and add a file called logback.xml, and insert the following code. This will append logs to the console. You can change the appender class to write logs to a file, database or any appender of your choosing.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
    <appender name="STDOUT" class="ch.qos.logback.core.ConsoleAppender">
        <encoder>
            <pattern>%d{HH:mm:ss.SSS} [%thread] %-5level %logger{36} - %msg%n</pattern>
        </encoder>
    </appender>
    <root level="debug">
        <appender-ref ref="STDOUT" />
    </root>    
</configuration>

Set the logging.config property to the location of the logback.xml file before the main method. Navigate to MsalWebSampleApplication.java and add the following code to the MsalWebSampleApplication public class.

@SpringBootApplication
public class MsalWebSampleApplication {

    static { System.setProperty("logging.config", "C:\Users\<your path>\src\main\resources\logback.xml"); }
    public static void main(String[] arrgs) {
        // Console.log("main");
        // System.console().printf("Hello");
        // System.out.printf("Hello %s!%n", "World");
        System.out.printf("%s%n", "Hello World");
        SpringApplication.run(MsalWebSampleApplication.class, args);
    }
}

In your tenant, you'll need separate app registrations for the web app and the web API. For app registration and exposing the web API scope, follow the steps in the scenario A web app that authenticates users and calls web APIs.

For instructions on how to bind to other logging frameworks, see the SLF4J documentation.

Personal and organization information

By default, MSAL logging doesn't capture or log any personal or organizational data. In the following example, logging personal or organizational data is off by default:

PublicClientApplication app2 = PublicClientApplication.builder(PUBLIC_CLIENT_ID)
        .authority(AUTHORITY)
        .build();

Turn on personal and organizational data logging by setting logPii() on the client application builder. If you turn on personal or organizational data logging, your app must take responsibility for safely handling highly-sensitive data and complying with any regulatory requirements.

In the following example, logging personal or organizational data is enabled:

PublicClientApplication app2 = PublicClientApplication.builder(PUBLIC_CLIENT_ID)
        .authority(AUTHORITY)
        .logPii(true)
        .build();

Next steps

For more code samples, refer to Microsoft identity platform code samples.

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