Spring Boot: How can I set the logging level with application.properties?

Update: Starting with Spring Boot v1.2.0.RELEASE, the settings in application.properties or application.yml do apply. See the Log Levels section of the reference guide.

logging.level.org.springframework.web: DEBUG
logging.level.org.hibernate: ERROR

For earlier versions of Spring Boot you cannot. You simply have to use the normal configuration for your logging framework (log4j, logback) for that. Add the appropriate config file (log4j.xml or logback.xml) to the src/main/resources directory and configure to your liking.

You can enable debug logging by specifying --debug when starting the application from the command-line.

Spring Boot provides also a nice starting point for logback to configure some defaults, coloring etc. the base.xml file which you can simply include in your logback.xml file. (This is also recommended from the default logback.xml in Spring Boot.

<include resource="org/springframework/boot/logging/logback/base.xml"/>     

You can do that using your application.properties.

logging.level.=ERROR -> Sets the root logging level to error
...
logging.level.=DEBUG -> Sets the root logging level to DEBUG

logging.file=${java.io.tmpdir}/myapp.log -> Sets the absolute log file path to TMPDIR/myapp.log

A sane default set of application.properties regarding logging using profiles would be: application.properties:

spring.application.name=<your app name here>
logging.level.=ERROR
logging.file=${java.io.tmpdir}/${spring.application.name}.log

application-dev.properties:

logging.level.=DEBUG
logging.file=

When you develop inside your favourite IDE you just add a -Dspring.profiles.active=dev as VM argument to the run/debug configuration of your app.

This will give you error only logging in production and debug logging during development WITHOUT writing the output to a log file. This will improve the performance during development ( and save SSD drives some hours of operation ;) ).

The proper way to set the root logging level is using the property logging.level.root. See documentation, which has been updated since this question was originally asked.

Example:

logging.level.root=WARN

If you are on Spring Boot then you can directly add following properties in application.properties file to set logging level, customize logging pattern and to store logs in the external file.

These are different logging levels and its order from minimum << maximum.

OFF << FATAL << ERROR << WARN << INFO << DEBUG << TRACE << ALL

# To set logs level as per your need.
logging.level.org.springframework = debug
logging.level.tech.hardik = trace

# To store logs to external file
# Here use strictly forward "/" slash for both Windows, Linux or any other os, otherwise, its won't work.      
logging.file=D:/spring_app_log_file.log

# To customize logging pattern.
logging.pattern.file= "%d{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss} - %msg%n"

Please pass through this link to customize your log more vividly.

https://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/docs/current/reference/html/boot-features-logging.html