CODEWITHSUNDEEP
loggingserilog
Aaron Glover
Aaron Glover

Reputation: 1249

Serilog - How to Custom Format the Output of a Destructured Class Object for File Sink

I am using Serilog to log to two 'sinks'.

  1. RollingTextFile
  2. Seq

I want to log a complex type - FileInfo object.

In Seq I want the full object, and ALL its properties available to me.

In the RollingTextFile however, I only want the 'fileInfo.FullName' to print in the text file, otherwise the text file is messy and difficult to read.

My logging statement will be as follows;

logger.Information("Processing File: {@fileInfo}  - Attempt ({intAttemptCounter}/3).",fileInfo, intAttemptCounter)

This works as expected with the fileInfo object destructured but as described above, produces a messy and unreadable text file.

I think I need to use a custom "Format Provider" as outlined here; https://github.com/serilog/serilog/wiki/Formatting-Output#format-providers

But I can't work out how to implement this for the fileInfo class object and apply it only to the RollingTextFile sink. I also can not find any other example implementations of this.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 2277

Answers (1)

Nicholas Blumhardt
Nicholas Blumhardt

Reputation: 31857

Instead of conditional formatting, you can just include the name in the message (which will show in the rolling file) and attach the full information as a property (which will only show in Seq).

var withFileInfo = logger.ForContext("File", fileInfo, destructureObjects true);
withFileInfo.Information("Processing File: {FileName} - Attempt ({intAttemptCounter}/3).",
    fileInfo.FullName, intAttemptCounter)

This will result in a nicer display in Seq as well, since the message will only contain the simple filename.

(Also, just a note - the withFileInfo logger can be reused on each iteration of the loop, so the cost of serializing fileInfo is only paid once.)

Upvotes: 5

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