Debug.Write into a file ???

[Andy Fish]

Hi,

I am wanting to put some simple logging into my .net app. The basic features
will be that errors get logged to a file and that there will be a
configuration flag to enable more detailed logging. It must be simple to
enable the detailed output in the live application.

I have used Debug.Write() but this seems to come out only on the output
window in the IDE - is there a way of configuring this to go into a file? I
also saw there is Trace.Write() but it seems that for this I have to
implement my own listener application to listen to the trace output.

Is it easy to make either of these do what I want or should I roll my own
logging code? I know that there is a port of log4j caled log4net but my app
is really not big enough to warrant this level of sophistication. At the
moment I am not after being able to have different levels of logging for
different components.

Thanks in advance for any advice

Andy

[Benjamin Disraeli]

Andy Fish wrote:

Hi,

I am wanting to put some simple logging into my .net app. The basic
features will be that errors get logged to a file and that there will be a
configuration flag to enable more detailed logging. It must be simple to
enable the detailed output in the live application.

I have used Debug.Write() but this seems to come out only on the output
window in the IDE - is there a way of configuring this to go into a file?
I also saw there is Trace.Write() but it seems that for this I have to
implement my own listener application to listen to the trace output.

Any .Net app can set up Trace.Listeners to handle logging/debug messages.

The great thing about it is a Listener can be many things.

It can be a text file -- yes -- but, you can also write directly to the OS
Event log -- for example, you could write to the Windows Application Event
log -- OR, you can create your own Event type such as MyApp -- which can be
viewed from Event Viewer.

There's a great, cheap, e-book called 'Tracing and Logging in .NET' that is
available as a PDF from Amazon. I suggest you read it.


Is it easy to make either of these do what I want or should I roll my own
logging code? I know that there is a port of log4j caled log4net but my
app is really not big enough to warrant this level of sophistication. At
the moment I am not after being able to have different levels of logging
for different components.

Thanks in advance for any advice

Andy

--
w:4

[Niroo]

There are a couple of subclasses of TraceListener provided in the framework and TextWriterTraceListener does what you want. You need to add some entries to app.config to wire it up.

However bear in mind that this imposes quite an overhead. EIF is the recommended way to go because its much lower overhead.

Also there is an logging application block
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...ml/Logging.asp

If you want a plug & go solution.

Niroo

"Andy Fish" wrote:

Hi,

I am wanting to put some simple logging into my .net app. The basic features
will be that errors get logged to a file and that there will be a
configuration flag to enable more detailed logging. It must be simple to
enable the detailed output in the live application.

I have used Debug.Write() but this seems to come out only on the output
window in the IDE - is there a way of configuring this to go into a file? I
also saw there is Trace.Write() but it seems that for this I have to
implement my own listener application to listen to the trace output.

Is it easy to make either of these do what I want or should I roll my own
logging code? I know that there is a port of log4j caled log4net but my app
is really not big enough to warrant this level of sophistication. At the
moment I am not after being able to have different levels of logging for
different components.

Thanks in advance for any advice

Andy