Sometimes you might want to include Java collections content in a log message. But standard Java collections do not provide a useful toString() implementation. So developers often use a helper method like this:

    /** 
     * @param collection A collection 
     * @return A string listing all collection items 
     */ 
    public static String toContentString(Collection<?> collection) { 
        return Arrays.toString(collection.toArray()); 
    } 

Then in typical slf4j log output code you might have something like this:

log.debug("Processing list: {}", toContentString(list));

But if list is long, then this code will cause unnecessary overhead in your application whenever it runs at a log level that does not actually log debug messages.

A simple solution for this is to use a wrapper object instead:

log.debug("Processing list: {}", toStringWrapper(list));

A simple toStringWrapper(..) implementation could be this:

/** 
     * Provides a wrapper object that can be used for logging of 
     * collection content 
     * 
     * @param collection A collection 
     * @return A wrapper toString() implementation listing all 
     *         collection items 
     */ 
    public static Object toStringWrapper(Collection<?> collection) { 
        return new Object() { 
            @Override 
            public String toString() { 
                return toContentString(collection); 
            } 
        }; 
    } 

This postpones the String generation until slf4j actually calls toString() on the log message parameter to substitute it for the ‘{}’ placeholder. And this substitution only happens if the log level actually requires it, i.e. less cpu cycles wasted on unused log message parameters.