GMail and log4j e-mail appender - error STARTTLS

I couldn't get log4j working along with Google. I kept on getting the following error:

com.sun.mail.smtp.SMTPSendFailedException: 530 5.7.0 Must issue a STARTTLS

Later I found out that the best way to get it working was creating my own SMTP appender. What I wanted, was to have a flexible application that I could configure once with a gmail username (marcelo@gmail) and then have the users/clients configure the rest of the log4j appender using the log4j property file.

Below is how I created the application. First you will need your parameters for your gmail account including the starttls. I place all these in a Enum class.

public enum EmailEnum {
  HOST("smtp.googlemail.com"), PORT("587"),
  USERNAME("marcelo@gmail.com"),PASSWORD("secret"),
  AUTHORIZED("mail.smtp.auth"), STARTTTS("mail.smtp.starttls.enable"),
  TRUE("true");
  private String value;
  private EmailEnum(String value) {
      this.value = value;
  }

  public String getValue() {
      return value;
  }
}

Then, I created the class that actually creates the mail appender. The main part is the appender method. As you can see, I am using the SMTPAppender class and I override the appender method. As you can tell, I'm using the Spring SimpleMail class to send the message.

package com.upmobile.midccore.commons.logger;

import java.util.Properties;

import org.apache.log4j.net.SMTPAppender;
import org.apache.log4j.spi.LoggingEvent;
import org.springframework.mail.MailException;
import org.springframework.mail.SimpleMailMessage;
import org.springframework.mail.javamail.JavaMailSenderImpl;


/**
* Application builds the SMPT Appender for the Google Mail (gmail).
* @author marceloolivas
*
*/
public class GMailAppender extends SMTPAppender {
   private JavaMailSenderImpl javaMail;
   private static final String NL = System.getProperty("line.separator");
  
   public GMailAppender() {
       javaMail = new JavaMailSenderImpl();
       javaMail.setHost(EmailEnum.HOST.getValue());
       javaMail.setPort(Integer.parseInt(EmailEnum.PORT.getValue()));
       javaMail.setUsername(EmailEnum.USERNAME.getValue());
       javaMail.setPassword(EmailEnum.PASSWORD.getValue());
       Properties props = new Properties();
       props.setProperty(EmailEnum.AUTHORIZED.getValue(), EmailEnum.TRUE.getValue());
       props.setProperty(EmailEnum.STARTTTS.getValue(), EmailEnum.TRUE.getValue());
       javaMail.setJavaMailProperties(props);
      
   }
  
   @Override
   public void append(LoggingEvent event) {
       super.append(event);
       // Create a thread safe "copy" of the template message and customize it
        SimpleMailMessage msg = new SimpleMailMessage();
       StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
       builder.append(getLayout().format(event));
       builder.append(event.getMessage().toString());
       if (event.getThrowableInformation() != null) {
           builder.append(NL);
           String[] stackTrace = event.getThrowableInformation().getThrowableStrRep();
           for(int i = 0; i < stackTrace.length; i++) {
               builder.append(stackTrace[i] + NL);
           }
           msg.setText(builder.toString());
       }
       String[] senders = getTo().trim().replace(" ", "").split(",");
       msg.setTo(senders);
       msg.setSubject(this.getSubject());
       try{
           javaMail.send(msg);
       } catch (MailException ex){
       }
      
   }
}

The actual log4j properties file is the following:

# Global logging configuration
log4j.rootLogger=ERROR, stdout, EMAIL
# SqlMap logging configuration...
log4j.logger.com.ibatis=DEBUG
log4j.logger.com.ibatis.common.jdbc.SimpleDataSource=DEBUG
log4j.logger.com.ibatis.sqlmap.engine.cache.CacheModel=DEBUG
log4j.logger.com.ibatis.sqlmap=DEBUG
log4j.logger.com.ibatis.sqlmap.engine.builder.xml.SqlMapParser=DEBUG
log4j.logger.com.ibatis.common.util.StopWatch=DEBUG
log4j.logger.java.sql.Connection=DEBUG
log4j.logger.java.sql.Statement=DEBUG
log4j.logger.java.sql.PreparedStatement=DEBUG
log4j.logger.java.sql.ResultSet=DEBUG

log4j.logger.org.springframework=INFO
log4j.logger.com.upmobile=DEBUG
# Console output...
log4j.appender.stdout=org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender
log4j.appender.stdout.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.stdout.layout.ConversionPattern=%-4p [%d{ISO8601}][%t] (%c.%M()line %-4L ) %m%n

# e-mail appender
log4j.appender.EMAIL=com.upmobile.midccore.commons.logger.GMailAppender
log4j.appender.EMAIL.Threshold=ERROR
log4j.appender.EMAIL.Subject=Error with the application
log4j.appender.EMAIL.to=abc@acme.com,xyz@acme.commons
log4j.appender.EMAIL.SMTPDebug=true
log4j.appender.EMAIL.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.EMAIL.layout.ConversionPattern=[%d] [%t] %-5p %c %x - %m%n
log4j.appender.EMAIL.BufferSize=1