Error logging in C#

Question

I am making my switch from coding in C++ to C#. I need to replace my C++ error logging/reporting macro system with something similar in C#.

In my C++ source I can w

Answer 1

Serilog is late to the party here, but brings some interesting options to the table. It looks much like classical text-based loggers to use:

Log.Information("Hello, {0}", username);

But, unlike earlier frameworks, it only renders the message and arguments into a string when writing text, e.g. to a file or the console.

The idea is that if you're using a 'NoSQL'-style data store for logs, you can record events like:

{
    Timestamp: "2014-02-....",
    Message: "Hello, nblumhardt",
    Properties:
    {
        "0": "nblumhardt"
    }
}

The .NET format string syntax is extended so you can write the above example as:

Log.Information("Hello, {Name}", username);

In this case the property will be called Name (rather than 0), making querying and correlation easier.

There are already a few good options for storage. MongoDB and Azure Table Storage seem to be quite popular for DIY. I originally built Serilog (though it is a community project) and I'm now working on a product called Seq, which provides storage and querying of these kinds of structured log events.