Category: ASP.Net

This blog post is going to discuss few different useful configurations for writing logs using NLog.

1. Writing directly into AWS CloudWatch

This can be accomplished by adding the NLog.AWS.Logger nuget package. Nuget link. Link for documentation / github.

Although, NLog.AWS.Logger supports other logging frameworks such as Log4Net, Serilog, those are out of context for the current blog post.

In nlog.config enable the extension:

<extensions>
    <add assembly="NLog.AWS.Logger" />
  </extensions>

Define the logger as a target:

<targets>
    <target name="aws" type="AWSTarget" logGroup="NLog.ConfigExample" region="us-east-1"/>
</targets>

2. Writing logs into ElasticSearch

Use NLog.Targets.ElasticSearch nuget package. Nuget URL. Github / documentation link.

Enable the extension:

<extensions>
    <add assembly="NLog.Targets.ElasticSearch"/>
  </extensions>

Define the target, documentation says preferred to wrap in a buffering wrapper:

<targets>
    <target name="elastic" xsi:type="BufferingWrapper" flushTimeout="5000">
      <target xsi:type="ElasticSearch" uri="http://localhost:9200/" />
    </target>
  </targets>

*Instead of hardcoing IP address or “localhost”, I would say use some name such as “elasticsearch” or “kibana” and then use the HOSTS file for mapping to the actual server. Then even if you have several applications on the same server and if the elasticsearch server gets changed, you don’t have to edit all the config files, you can edit just the hosts file. hosts file is located at /etc/hosts on Linux and C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts on Windows.

Now we will discuss about 4 different interesting wrappers:

1. Buffering Wrapper
2. Async Wrapper
3. AspNetBuffering Wrapper
4. FallbackGroup Wrapper

These 4 loggers are wrappers i.e these loggers don’t write logs directly. Instead they are used to wrap other loggers by providing some interesting functionality that can be used to take advantage based upon necessity and use-case.

1. Buffering Wrapper

Buffers log events and sends in batches.

As mentioned above in the ElasticSearch example, the wrapper would buffer messages and sends in batches.

Documentation

There is a very interesting use-case by using AutoFlushWrapper with BufferingWrapper and the actual target that writes the logs, such as writing the logs only when error happen.

2. Async Wrapper

When you don’t need buffering but at the same time if you don’t want your application to wait until logging is done, this could be useful.

Documentation

3. AspNetBuffering Wrapper

Waits until the completion of ASP.Net request and then sends the logs to the wrapped target.

Documentation

4. FallbackGroup Wrapper

This wrapper can be used for wrapping around multiple targets. For example ElasticSearch followed by Cloudwatch followed by File. i.e if the logger is unable to write to ElasticSearch, it would write to Cloudwatch, if that too failed it would write the logs into file.

Documentation

–

Mr. Kanti Kalyan Arumilli

B.Tech, M.B.A

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Founder & CEO, Lead Full-Stack .Net developer

ALight Technology And Services Limited

ALight Technologies USA Inc

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