Logback's architecture

Logback's basic architecture is sufficiently generic so as to apply under different circumstances. At the present time, logback is divided into three modules, logback-core, logback-classic and logback-access.

The core module lays the groundwork for the other two modules. The classic module extends core. The classic module corresponds to a significantly improved version of log4j. Logback-classic natively implements the SLF4J API so that you can readily switch back and forth between logback and other logging systems such as log4j or java.util.logging (JUL) introduced in JDK 1.4. The third module called access integrates with Servlet containers to provide HTTP-access log functionality. A separate document covers access module documentation.

In the remainder of this document, we will write "logback" to refer to the logback-classic module.