Best practice to include log4Net external config file in ASP.NET

I have seen at least two ways to include an external log4net config file in an ASP.NET web application:

Having the following attribute in your AssemblyInfo.cs file:

[assembly: log4net.Config.XmlConfigurator(ConfigFile = "Log.config", Watch = true)]

Calling the XmlConfigurator in the Global.asax.cs:

protected void Application_Start()
{
    XmlConfigurator.Configure(new FileInfo("Log.config"));
}

What would be the best practice to do it?

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Answers:

Method 1

Method 2

Answers:

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Method 1

At startup, call:

XmlConfigurator.Configure();

In your Web.config, specify log4net.Config in appSettings:

<add key="log4net.Config" value="Log.config" />

This special setting allows you to change the log configuration without having to recompile. Especially helpful for moving between multiple environments.

Example

Consider the following project file structure:

configlog4netdebug.config
configlog4netstaging.config
configlog4netrelease.config
configappSettingsdebug.config
configappSettingsstaging.config
configappSettingsrelease.config

Application and logging configurations are distinguished for each environment. References to the logging configurations are maintained in the application settings.

configappSettingsdebug.config:

<appSettings>
    <add key="log4net.Config" value="configlog4netdebug.config" />
    ...
</appSettings>

configappSettingsstaging.config:

<appSettings>
    <add key="log4net.Config" value="configlog4netstaging.config" />
    ...
</appSettings>

configappSettingsrelease.config:

<appSettings>
    <add key="log4net.Config" value="configlog4netrelease.config" />
    ...
</appSettings>

Changing environments is a simple matter of updating the appSettings file in Web.config.

<appSettings file="configappSettingsstaging.config">
    ...
</appSettings>

Method 2

I was dissatisfied with the “magic” configuration approach, because I wanted to specify my configuration in a path with an environment variable (%PUBLIC%MyAppMySettings.config).

So instead, I have this in my app.config:

<add key="MyLog4NetConfigFile" value="%PUBLIC%MyAppMySettings.config"/>

And do this to set my log4net configuration:

var configFile = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings.Get("MyLog4NetConfigFile");
if( !string.IsNullOrEmpty(configFile))
{
    configFile = Environment.ExpandEnvironmentVariables(configFile);
    XmlConfigurator.Configure(new FileInfo(configFile));
}

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0

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