Is it fine to use logs in the Helper Methods?

Question

I have been doubting for a long time whether or not to have a logger in methods (usually helper methods) like the one below.

Whether we can print it in the method or print the response where the method is called.

public String getAddNewUserUrl()
{
    String url      =   null;
    String mode     =   null;
    try
    {
        log.info("Inside getAddNewUserUrl "); // Can u use logs like this.
        mode        =   new ModeUtil().getMode();

        if("local".equalsIgnoreCase(mode) || "staging".equalsIgnoreCase(mode))
        {
            url     =   ResourceBundle.getBundle("ApplicationResources").getString("staging.url");
        }
        else
        {
            url     =   ResourceBundle.getBundle("ApplicationResources").getString("staging.url");  
        }
        log.info("The url is  : " + url);  // Can u use logs like this

    }
    catch(Exception e)
    {
        e.printStackTrace();
        log.info("Exception in the method getMode ::"+e.getMessage());
    }
    return url;

Answer 1

Logs are supposed to be put in every part of your application to provide meaningful information to developer/tester/debuggers or any other stake holder.

Just be careful to put appropriate logging level in your helper classes/utilities especially if you going to distribute it as jar.

Answer 2

It's ok to have logging in every part of your application, even in the helper methods, if you can set different logging levels.

log.info("The url is  : " + url, LogLevel.Debug);

This ensures that you can turn it on or off depending on how much info you want to gather. Having it always on, that's not so smart.