How do you configure and enable log4net for a stand-alone class library assembly?

In your code you can check if there are any loggers via 

log4net.LogManager.GetCurrentLoggers().Count()

You could then for example use an XmlConfigurator to load a default configuration from a file:

log4net.Config.XmlConfigurator.Configure(configFile)

You could do the initialization in a static or regular constructor.

class Sample
{
    private static readonly log4net.ILog LOG;

    static Sample()
    {
        if (log4net.LogManager.GetCurrentLoggers().Count() == 0)
        {
            loadConfig();
        }
        LOG = log4net.LogManager.GetLogger(typeof(Sample));

    }

    private static void loadConfig()
    {
        /* Load your config file here */
    }

    public void YourMethod()
    {
       LOG.Info("Your messages");
    }
}

Solution 1

A solution for the first set of constraints is to basically wrap the log4net.LogManager into your own custom LogManager class like Jacob, Jeroen, and McWafflestix have suggested (see code below).

Unfortunately, the log4net.LogManager class is static and C# doesn't support static inheritance, so you couldn't simply inherit from it and override the GetLogger method. There aren't too many methods in the log4net.LogManager class however, so this is certainly a possibility.

The other drawback to this solution is that if you have an existing codebase (which I do in my case) you would have to replace all existing calls to log4net.LogManager with your wrapper class. Not a big deal with today's refactoring tools however.

For my project, these drawbacks outweighed the benefits of using a logging configuration supplied by the calling application so, I went with Solution 2.

Code

First, you need a LogManager wrapper class:

using System;
using System.IO;
using log4net;
using log4net.Config;

namespace MyApplication.Logging
{
    //// TODO: Implement the additional GetLogger method signatures and log4net.LogManager methods that are not seen below.
    public static class LogManagerWrapper
    {
        private static readonly string LOG_CONFIG_FILE= @"path\to\log4net.config";

        public static ILog GetLogger(Type type)
        {
            // If no loggers have been created, load our own.
            if(LogManager.GetCurrentLoggers().Length == 0)
            {
                LoadConfig();
            }
            return LogManager.GetLogger(type);
        }

        private void LoadConfig()
        {
           //// TODO: Do exception handling for File access issues and supply sane defaults if it's unavailable.   
           XmlConfigurator.ConfigureAndWatch(new FileInfo(LOG_CONFIG_FILE));
        }              
}

Then in your classes, instead of:

private static readonly ILog log = LogManager.GetLogger(typeof(MyApp));

Use:

private static readonly ILog log = LogManagerWrapper.GetLogger(typeof(MyApp));

Solution 2

For my purposes, I have decided to settle on a solution that meets the second set of constraints. See the code below for my solution.

From the Apache log4net document:

"An assembly may choose to utilize a named logging repository rather than the default repository. This completely separates the logging for the assembly from the rest of the application. This can be very useful to component developers that wish to use log4net for their components but do not want to require that all the applications that use their component are aware of log4net. It also means that their debugging configuration is separated from the applications configuration. The assembly should specify the RepositoryAttribute to set its logging repository."

Code

I placed the following lines in the AssemblyInfo.cs file of my class library:

// Log4Net configuration file location
[assembly: log4net.Config.Repository("CompanyName.IntegrationLibName")]
[assembly: log4net.Config.XmlConfigurator(ConfigFile = "CompanyName.IntegrationLibName.config", Watch = true)]

    

References

  • LogManagerMembers
  • Jacob's Answer
  • Jeroen's Answer
  • McWafflestix's Answer
  • log4net Manual - Repositories
  • log4NET from a class library (dll)

You can probably code something around the XmlConfigurator class:

public static class MyLogManager
{
    // for illustration, you should configure this somewhere else...
    private static string configFile = @"path\to\log4net.config";

    public static ILog GetLogger(Type type)
    {
        if(log4net.LogManager.GetCurrentLoggers().Length == 0)
        {
            // load logger config with XmlConfigurator
            log4net.Config.XmlConfigurator.Configure(configFile);
        }
        return LogManager.GetLogger(type);
    }
}

Then in your classes, instead of:

private static readonly ILog log = LogManager.GetLogger(typeof(MyApp));

Use:

private static readonly ILog log = MyLogManager.GetLogger(typeof(MyApp));

Of course, it would be preferable to make this class a service and dynamically configure it with the IoC container of your choice, but you get the idea?

EDIT: Fixed Count() problem pointed out in comments.


In your standalone class library, have a singleton which loads the log4net configuration file using the log4net.Config.XmlConfigurator.

Specifically, you can define all of your code to use your own custom logging class; this class can just be a simple wrapper of the log4net logging calls, with one addition; make a static member which contains the log information you want to log to; initialize that with a call to the XmlConfigurator in the static constructor for that class. That's all you have to do.

Tags:

C#

.Net

Log4Net

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