How can I implement “object dumping” with log4php?

Question

I'm currently in the process of moving from our own proprietary logging solution to log4php in one of our projects. Our own solution has a helper method which I posted below. The purpose of the method is to write the contents of a variable (and any of it's members recursively) to the log.

The equivalent place for this method in log4php would be the Logger class (I assume). But I wonder what the proper way would be to integrate the functionality.

Should I just derive from Logger and extend it? Or is there a way to "plug in" this functionality.

Thanks in advance.

/**
* Dump the complete content of the target object to the log.
*
* @param mixed $target The object to dump.
* @param int $level The verbosity level.
* @param int $indent Indentation level.
*/
public static function dump( $target, $level = Logging::eDEBUG, $indent = 0 ) {
  if( $level < self::getInstance()->logLevel ) return;

  if( null == $target ) {
    self::log( "d", "> " . str_repeat( "\t", $indent ) . "null", $level );
    return;
  }

  if( is_string( $target ) || is_numeric( $target ) ) {
    self::log( "d", "> " . str_repeat( "\t", $indent ) . $target, $level );
    return;
  }

  foreach( $target as $key => $value ) {
    if( is_array( $value ) ) {
      self::log( "d", "> " . str_repeat( "\t", $indent ) . $key . " -> Array (", $level );
      self::dump( $value, $level, $indent + 1 );
      self::log( "d", "> " . str_repeat( "\t", $indent ) . ")", $level );
      continue;
    }

    if( is_object( $value ) ) {
      self::log( "d", "> " . str_repeat( "\t", $indent ) . $key . " -> Object (", $level );
      self::dump( (array)$value, $level, $indent + 1 );
      self::log( "d", "> " . str_repeat( "\t", $indent ) . ")", $level );

    } else {
      self::log( "d", "> " . str_repeat( "\t", $indent ) . $key . " -> " . $value, $level );
    }
  }
} 

Answer 1

This is all explained in the log4php docs.