c# Best Method to create a log file

Question

I\'m writing a tool that\'s going to be check the health of workstations across a network, and will fix according to the issues it finds. I want to create a log file as the

Answer 1

I would not use third party libraries, I would log to an xml file.

This is a code sample that do logging to a xml file from different threads:

private static readonly object Locker = new object();
private static XmlDocument _doc = new XmlDocument();

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    if (File.Exists("logs.txt"))
        _doc.Load("logs.txt");
    else
    {
        var root = _doc.CreateElement("hosts");
        _doc.AppendChild(root);
    }

    for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++)
    {
        new Thread(new ThreadStart(DoSomeWork)).Start();
    }
}

static void DoSomeWork()
{
    /*
     * Here you will build log messages
     */
    Log("192.168.1.15", "alive");
}

static void Log(string hostname, string state)
{
    lock (Locker)
    {
        var el = (XmlElement)_doc.DocumentElement.AppendChild(_doc.CreateElement("host"));
        el.SetAttribute("Hostname", hostname);
        el.AppendChild(_doc.CreateElement("State")).InnerText = state;
        _doc.Save("logs.txt");
    }
}