Someone over at Stack Overflow posted a question about logging MQ error messages to a file. After the user updated the posting, I recognized the code as mine (MQWrite.java) that I wrote back in 2000 (Yup, 16 years ago!!).

So, I decided to bring MQWrite.java into this decade and created MQWrite2.java. Here is MQWrite2.java that sets the connection information in a HashTable and uses Log4J as the logger. (You can download it from here.)

import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.Hashtable;

import org.apache.log4j.Logger;

import com.ibm.mq.MQException;
import com.ibm.mq.MQMessage;
import com.ibm.mq.MQPutMessageOptions;
import com.ibm.mq.MQQueue;
import com.ibm.mq.MQQueueManager;
import com.ibm.mq.constants.CMQC;

/**
 * Program Name
 *  MQWrite2
 *
 * Description
 *  This java class will connect to a queue manager and
 *  and write a message to a queue.
*
 * Sample Command Line Parameters
 *  -h 127.0.0.1 -p 1414 -c TEST.CHL -m MQA1 -q TEST.Q1
 *
 * @author Roger Lacroix, Capitalware Inc.
 */
public class MQWrite2
{
   private Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(MQWrite2.class.getName());
   private Hashtable<String, String> params = null;
   private Hashtable<String, Object> mqht = null;
   private String qMgrName;
   private String outputQName;

   /**
    * The constructor
    */
   public MQWrite2()
   {
      super();
      logger.info("MQWrite2 is now starting.");
   }

   /**
    * Make sure the required parameters are present.
    * @return true/false
    */
   private boolean allParamsPresent()
   {
      boolean b = params.containsKey("-h") && params.containsKey("-p") &&
                  params.containsKey("-c") && params.containsKey("-m") &&
                  params.containsKey("-q");
      if (b)
      {
         try
         {
            Integer.parseInt((String) params.get("-p"));
         }
         catch (NumberFormatException e)
         {
            b = false;
         }
      }

      return b;
   }

   /**
    * Extract the command-line parameters and initialize the MQ variables.
    * @param args
    * @throws IllegalArgumentException
    */
   private void init(String[] args) throws IllegalArgumentException
   {
      params = new Hashtable<String, String>();
      if (args.length > 0 && (args.length % 2) == 0)
      {
         for (int i = 0; i < args.length; i += 2)
         {
            params.put(args[i], args[i + 1]);
         }
      }
      else
      {
         throw new IllegalArgumentException();
      }

      if (allParamsPresent())
      {
         qMgrName = (String) params.get("-m");
         outputQName = (String) params.get("-q");

         mqht = new Hashtable<String, Object>();

         mqht.put(CMQC.CHANNEL_PROPERTY, params.get("-c"));
         mqht.put(CMQC.HOST_NAME_PROPERTY, params.get("-h"));

         try
         {
            mqht.put(CMQC.PORT_PROPERTY, new Integer(params.get("-p")));
         }
         catch (NumberFormatException e)
         {
            mqht.put(CMQC.PORT_PROPERTY, new Integer(1414));
         }

         // I don't want to see MQ exceptions at the console.
         MQException.log = null;
      }
      else
      {
         throw new IllegalArgumentException();
      }
   }

   /**
    * Connect, open queue, write a message, close queue and disconnect.
    *
    */
   private void testReceive()
   {
      int openOptions = CMQC.MQOO_OUTPUT + CMQC.MQOO_FAIL_IF_QUIESCING;
      MQPutMessageOptions pmo = new MQPutMessageOptions();
      MQQueueManager _qMgr = null;
      MQQueue queue = null;
      MQMessage sendMsg = null;
      String line = "This is a test message.";

      try
      {
         _qMgr = new MQQueueManager(qMgrName, mqht);
         queue = _qMgr.accessQueue(outputQName, openOptions);

         sendMsg = new MQMessage();
         sendMsg.messageId = CMQC.MQMI_NONE;
         sendMsg.correlationId = CMQC.MQCI_NONE;
         sendMsg.writeString(line);
         // put the message on the queue
         queue.put(sendMsg, pmo);
         logger.info("MQWrite2 Message inserted: " + line);
      }
      catch (MQException mqex)
      {
         logger.error("MQWrite2 MQException CC=" +mqex.completionCode + " : RC=" + mqex.reasonCode);
      }
      catch (IOException e)
      {
         logger.error("MQWrite2 IOException " + e.getLocalizedMessage());
      }
      finally
      {
         try
         {
            if (queue != null)
               queue.close();
         }
         catch (MQException mqex2)
         {
            logger.error("MQWrite2 MQException CC=" +mqex2.completionCode + " : RC=" + mqex2.reasonCode);
         }
         finally
         {
            try
            {
               if (_qMgr != null)
                  _qMgr.disconnect();
            }
            catch (MQException mqex3)
            {
               logger.error("MQWrite2 MQException CC=" +mqex3.completionCode + " : RC=" + mqex3.reasonCode);
            }
         }
      }

      logger.info("MQWrite2 is now ending.");
   }

   /**
    * main line
    * @param args
    */
   public static void main(String[] args)
   {
      MQWrite2 write = new MQWrite2();

      try
      {
         write.init(args);
         write.testReceive();
      }
      catch (IllegalArgumentException e)
      {
         System.out.println("Usage: java MQWrite2 -h host -p port -c channel -m QueueManagerName -q QueueName");
         System.exit(1);
      }

      System.exit(0);
   }
}

And here is the ‘log4j.properties’ file that goes with the code (it is included in the download):

#
# stdout
#
log4j.appender.stdout=org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender
log4j.appender.stdout.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.stdout.layout.ConversionPattern=%m%n
#
# MQWrite
#
log4j.category.MQWrite2=DEBUG, mqwrite, stdout
#log4j.category.MQWrite2=INFO, mqwrite, stdout
# "mqwrite" appender writes to a file
log4j.appender.mqwrite=org.apache.log4j.RollingFileAppender
log4j.appender.mqwrite.File=log/MQWrite.log
log4j.appender.mqwrite.MaxFileSize=1000KB
log4j.appender.mqwrite.MaxBackupIndex=9
log4j.appender.mqwrite.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.mqwrite.layout.ConversionPattern=%d{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss} %p - %m%n
#log4j.appender.mqwrite.layout.ConversionPattern=%d{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSS} [%t] %p (%F:%M:%L) - %m%n

Make sure you create a ‘log’ directory under the directory where you run the code from or else it will throw an error like:

log4j:ERROR setFile(null,true) call failed.
java.io.FileNotFoundException: log\MQWrite.log (The system cannot find the path specified)

Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.