Log4net vs. Nlog

log4netnlog

Anyone have experience for both? How do they stack up against each other?

We are planning on using one of them for logging in an enterprise application.

References:

EDIT: We have no existing dependencies to either nlog or log4net.

Best Answer

I was recently tasked to "prototype up some loggin'" for an upcoming project. I didn't have any logging framework experience. I researched, ran through tutorials, made toy apps, etc. on Log4Net, NLog, and Enterprise Library for a few days. Came back 3-4 weeks later and put them together into a cohesive demo. Hopefully some of this is useful to you.

My recommendation for our project is this:

Use a logging facade (e.g. Common.Logging, SimpleLoggingFacade) to avoid direct dependencies.
If we end up using Enterprise Library for other facilities, then use it for Logging, too.
If we end up using something with a dependency on Log4Net, use Log4Net.
If none of the above, use NLog. Which I'd prefer.

That's based on these findings (opinions!):

All 3 frameworks are capable and can do some sophisticated things. We want a quality solution, but frankly don't need ultra high performance or 60 types of event sinks.
All 3 have very similar basic concepts.
Each has its own cool tricks, like really advanced routing, or dynamic log filenames, file truncating, etc.
All 3 are pretty well documented in their own way.
For a complete newb like me, they were all a little awkward initially. No drastic differences here for the basics. I got over it.
When revisiting things a few weeks later, NLog was clearly the easiest to resume. I needed very little brush up on it. With Log4Net, I had to revisit a few online examples to get going. With EntLib, I gave up and did the tutorials all over again from scratch - I was totally lost.
I couldn't figure out how to get EntLib to do some things like log to the database. It might be easy, but it was beyond my time limit.
Log4Net and NLog have a small in-code footprint. EntLib is spammy, but I'd use a facade over it anyway.
I accidentally mis-configured EntLib and it told me at run time. Log4Net didn't. I didn't have an accidental mis-config with NLog.
EntLib comes with a nice looking app.config editor, which you 100% need. NLog has a config file schema so you get "intellisense". Log4Net comes with nada.

So obviously I like NLog so far. Not enough to use it in spite of having another solution available, though.

Related Solutions

C# – forward from log4net to NLog

create a custom log4net Appender that logs the messages to a nlog logger. this may be at least the solution if you just want to pass the log information to nlog instead of replacing all occurences of log4net logging with nlog.

look here, here and here

.net – How to configure log4net programmatically from scratch (no config)

Here's an example class that creates log4net config completely in code. I should mention that creating a logger via a static method is generally viewed as bad, but in my context, this is what I wanted. Regardless, you can carve up the code to meet your needs.

using log4net;
using log4net.Repository.Hierarchy;
using log4net.Core;
using log4net.Appender;
using log4net.Layout;

namespace dnservices.logging
{
public class Logger
{
    private PatternLayout _layout = new PatternLayout();
    private const string LOG_PATTERN = "%d [%t] %-5p %m%n";

    public string DefaultPattern
    {
        get { return LOG_PATTERN; }
    }

    public Logger()
    {
        _layout.ConversionPattern = DefaultPattern;
        _layout.ActivateOptions();
    }

    public PatternLayout DefaultLayout
    {
        get { return _layout; }
    }

    public void AddAppender(IAppender appender)
    {
        Hierarchy hierarchy = 
            (Hierarchy)LogManager.GetRepository();

        hierarchy.Root.AddAppender(appender);
    }

    static Logger()
    {
        Hierarchy hierarchy = (Hierarchy)LogManager.GetRepository();
        TraceAppender tracer = new TraceAppender();
        PatternLayout patternLayout = new PatternLayout();

        patternLayout.ConversionPattern = LOG_PATTERN;
        patternLayout.ActivateOptions();

        tracer.Layout = patternLayout;
        tracer.ActivateOptions();
        hierarchy.Root.AddAppender(tracer);

        RollingFileAppender roller = new RollingFileAppender();
        roller.Layout = patternLayout;
        roller.AppendToFile = true;
        roller.RollingStyle = RollingFileAppender.RollingMode.Size;
        roller.MaxSizeRollBackups = 4;
        roller.MaximumFileSize = "100KB";
        roller.StaticLogFileName = true;
        roller.File = "dnservices.txt";
        roller.ActivateOptions();
        hierarchy.Root.AddAppender(roller);

        hierarchy.Root.Level = Level.All;
        hierarchy.Configured = true;
    }

    public static ILog Create()
    {
        return LogManager.GetLogger("dnservices");
    }
}

}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

C# – forward from log4net to NLog

.net – How to configure log4net programmatically from scratch (no config)

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