Android app publishing checklist

Question

The android app publishing checklist says that I need to delete all Log statements from my code. Does that mean I need to delete them or would just commenting them out do? I would need those Log statements for updation and maintenance purpose later on so i don't want to delete them.Publishing checklist

Answer 1

You don't have to remove your logs from code, just disable them in RELEASE mode. The easiest way to achieve that, check mode before log something

 if (BuildConfig.DEBUG) {
    Log.i("TAG", "Log");
 }

But it will be painful if you have a lot of logs in your code, so good idea is to write your custom wrapper above the Android Log class, with ability to turn on/off logging in one place, for example in Application class.

Or you can use some smart loggers like Timber

EDIT

About log wrapper, to be honest I've never created such wrapper, I prefer to use Timber, but the simplest version may look like this

public class Logger {

    public static void e(String tag, String body) {
        if (BuildConfig.DEBUG) {
            Log.e(tag, body);
        }
    }

    public static void v(String tag, String body) {
        if (BuildConfig.DEBUG) {
            Log.v(tag, body);
        }

    }

    ...
}

and instead of using

Log.e("Tag", "Body");

use

Logger.e("Tag", "Body");