I am wondering if any tool can help do noninvasive logging for a third party assembly library. Can log4net/Postsharp do it?
Yes, there was a log4netpostsharp library but it hasn't been updated to the latest version of PostSharp so you need to do some custom aspects here most likely (very easy to do though).
An example for logging through trace and postsharp here.
Related
How do I attach logback to smartfox server?
smartfox uses log4j by default. How can I shift logging of my extensions/all of smartfox to logback?
I've tried this but this is failing with this error cause it has already boud to log4j I guess.
SmartFoxServer 2x uses Simple Logging Facade for Java (SLF4J) for logging. The very purpose of SLF4J is to provide a facade over the logging framework so the user can replace one logging framework with another. In your case log4J with Logback. I'll first explain how SLF4J works and how you can change one logging framework with another and briefly discuss some caveats. Then I'll cover some SmartFoxServer specifics.
Simple Logging Facade for Java Architecture
SLF4J provides API which serves as facade (abstraction layer) over the actual logging framework. This allows the user to easily switch between frameworks on deployment time without the need to change the code. But it also means that SLF4J on its own is not enough - the default implementation is no-op. In order to actually log anything you need actual logging framework (such as log4j or logback) and so called "binder" which servers as a bridge or adapter between SLF4J and the logging framework.
Swapping Logging Frameworks
The SLF4J User Manual provides detailed explanation on how you can swap one framework with another during deployment time. In short you just need to delete the old binder and logging framework and add the new binder and the new logging framework. To swap log4 with logback you need to delete slf4j-log4j12 and log4j jars and add logback-classic and logback-core.
Caveats
You should make sure that there is only one binder implementation in the classpath. Having more than one causes waring, not error. SLF4J would just pick one of the implementations. But I would not rule out the possibility for this to cause issues with more complex application (such as SmartFoxServer) that uses multiple class loaders. But more importantly you should make sure the SLF4J API, the binder and the logging framework versions are compatible. For example if you use old version of SLF4J with newer version of logback that may cause ClassNotFoundException. I suspect that this could be reason why you get the error you see.
Swapping lof4j with Logback as logging framework for SmartFoxServer 2x
SmartFoxServer 2x version 2.17.3 uses SLF4J API version 1.7.5. To swap log4j you need to first delete lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.7.5.jar and then add compatible version of logback-classic and logback-core jars. For example logback-classic 1.1.0 and logback-core 1.1.0.
You can delete lib/log4j-1.2.15.jar but I would rather keep it. The binder(lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.7.5.jar) is not meant to be used directly so it should be safe to be deleted. On other hand there are libraries that use log4j directly. I don't know if SmartFoxServer 2x uses any such library but it is safer to keep it just in case. Swapping the binder is enough for SLF4J to use Logback and ignore log4j.
Logger Output
SmartFoxServer 2x parses the logger output to provide some functionality such as the Admin Log Viewer. If you change the log output this may cause this functionality to stop working and maybe even cause other issues (on theory it should not, but you never know). There is configuration file (config/logParser.properties) that would allow you to configure the log parser, but I didn't found any documentation about it. You may try to ask on the SmartFoxServer forum. The developers are actually pretty active there so they may help.
Swapping loggers only for your extension
The instruction I gave swaps the logger for all extensions and SmartFoxServer. If you want you may try to swap them only for your extensions. But I'm not quite sure if and how that would work. Each class extension uses its own class loader but this provides isolation between extensions and SmartFoxServer and extensions, but not between extension and SmartFoxServer. What does this mean is that if you add lib.jar to Extension A classpath it would not be visible to Extension B or to SmartFoxServer code. But if you add lib.jar to the SmartFoxServer classpath it would be visible to both Extension A and Extension B. As SmartFoxServer already contains SLF4J API on its classpath you should not add it to your extension classpath. You can try to add logback-classic and logback-core to you extension classpath. But in this case you'll have two binder implementations in you extension classpath (logback and log4j from the SmartFoxServer classpath). As already discussed, I'm not quite sure how and if this would work.
Conclusion
SLF4J provides an easy way to swap logging frameworks, but there some caveats. And SmartFoxServer adds some caveats on its own. Unless SmartFoxServer team supports swapping of the underlaying logging framework (which judging by some anwers in their forum, they don't), I would be quite careful and do such swap only if there are some benefits and it is not just a matter of personal preference.
looking for some advice here on developing a common logging environment for a NuGet package.
I've currently got a private NuGet package created from a C# library that works perfectly for local console apps and as such was written to log to the Windows event log.
Now I want to be able to use that package in an Azure function but of course Azure uses a different logging mechanism.
Any advice on how to create a logging overlay that allows the library to be compiled on my local PC in Visual Studio but also support logging in Azure if the package is used there?
Cheers,
Dave
I believe you are looking for the Microsoft.Extensions.Logging namespace and interface. This interface is used extensively across azure services, .Net 4+ and .Net Core. If you look for related nuget packages you will find multiple implementations for different logging scenarios and tools, including native sinks like event logs, functions, console as well as custom sinks like Splunk and Serilog.
If you separate your logging implementation from your application/package code and implement Microsoft.Extensions.Logging and adhere to the interface, then your logging interface can be easily plumbed in to many supported sinks, including functions.
A previous answer of mine provides an earlier, more manual approach to this problem. See here.
Log4j documentation says that it supports internationalization, but no where it provides any details of how to achieve that. Has anyone work on this or can suggest something regarding this please?
I never used it but the feature seems to be provided by the Category.l7dlog methods (added in Release 0.8.4 - 2000-05-01).
As I never used it you have to search for more information on your own or switch to an up to date logging framework like e.g. slf4j with better documentation.
Are you familiar with SLF4J? It can work in conjunction with log4j. SLF4J supports localisation built on top the cal10n project.
I have linqpad referencing one of my own assemblies which uses log4net. When linqpad calls my assembly method I am setting my log4net logging levels to ERROR yet I see debug level messages from my assembly showing up in the linqpad results area.
Anybody know what causes this? Does Linqpad use log4net itself or have any special behavior with log4net?
LINQPad uses SharpDevelop which has a dependency on log4net, but this is kept pretty well isolated to the UI domain and shouldn't have any effect on your queries.
How are you configuring log4net? Is it programmatically or via an application config file? If it's the latter, the application config file should be named linqpad.config in order to be picked up by your queries.
I was having trouble with my configuration not being picked up. Creating a separate Linqpad.config (not editing LINQPad's own!) is the key bit of info I was missing - thanks Joe. Fantastic app by the way!
Does the Castle Logging Facility support anything in the way of what log4Net.Config.XmlConfigurator.ConfigureAndWatch() does? I'd like to use the Windsor logging facility but I'd really like to be able to change the logging config at runtime as well. Can anyone point me in the direction of how I'd accomplish this?
According to this file in the Castle source repository, the Castle log4net implementation does (or can) do a ConfigureAndWatch. I haven't used Castle, so I can't comment on exactly how to take advantage of this. My first guess is that it should "just work". If you are using Castle and you can configure its logging to use log4net, you might already be getting ConfigureAndWatch. It is possible that ConfigureAndWatch only works if you configure log4net in its own config file (as opposed to the app.config or web.config). It should not be too difficult to test (if you are already using Castle) to see if ConfigureAndWatch works as expected.
If you are not using Castle already, you might want to wait for someone more familiar with Castle and Castle logging to post an answer.
Here are another SO post about Castle logging that you might find helpful:
This one shows log4net configuration in the app.config/web.config (the accepted answer is from February 2010. I don't know if there is more recent information available or not):
Logging with Castle.Facilities.Logging and log4net
Good luck!