Serilog Integration

What is Serilog?

Serilog is a popular third-party logging library with excellent structured logging support and many sinks (destinations) for writing logs.

Installing Serilog

dotnet add package Serilog.AspNetCore
dotnet add package Serilog.Sinks.Console
dotnet add package Serilog.Sinks.File

Basic Configuration

using Serilog;

var builder = WebApplication.CreateBuilder(args);

// Configure Serilog
builder.Host.UseSerilog((context, configuration) =>
{
    configuration
        .ReadFrom.Configuration(context.Configuration)
        .WriteTo.Console()
        .WriteTo.File("logs/log-.txt", rollingInterval: RollingInterval.Day);
});

var app = builder.Build();

app.UseSerilogRequestLogging(); // Log HTTP requests

app.Run();

Configuration in appsettings.json

{
  "Serilog": {
    "MinimumLevel": {
      "Default": "Information",
      "Override": {
        "Microsoft": "Warning",
        "System": "Warning"
      }
    },
    "WriteTo": [
      { "Name": "Console" },
      {
        "Name": "File",
        "Args": {
          "path": "logs/log-.txt",
          "rollingInterval": "Day"
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

Popular Serilog Sinks

File Sink

.WriteTo.File("logs/log-.txt", rollingInterval: RollingInterval.Day)

Seq Sink

Seq is a log server for searching and analyzing structured logs.

dotnet add package Serilog.Sinks.Seq

.WriteTo.Seq("http://localhost:5341")

Application Insights Sink

dotnet add package Serilog.Sinks.ApplicationInsights

Enrichers

Enrichers add additional properties to all log events.

dotnet add package Serilog.Enrichers.Environment
dotnet add package Serilog.Enrichers.Thread

configuration
    .Enrich.WithMachineName()
    .Enrich.WithThreadId()
    .Enrich.WithEnvironmentName()

Key Takeaways

• Serilog: Popular structured logging library
• UseSerilog(): Configure Serilog in Program.cs
• Sinks: Console, File, Seq, Application Insights, etc.
• Configuration: appsettings.json or code
• Enrichers: Add properties to all logs
• UseSerilogRequestLogging(): Log HTTP requests