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Arxisos edited this page Jan 11, 2012 · 5 revisions

ServiceStack.Logging - an implementation-free logging interface for your app logic to bind to

Even in the spirit of Bind to interfaces, not implemenations, many .NET projects still have a hard dependency to log4net.

Although log4net is the standard for logging in .NET, potential problems can arise from your libraries having a hard dependency on it:

  • Your library needs to be shipped with a third-party dependency
  • Potential conflicts can occur when different libraries have dependency on different versions of log4net (e.g. the 1.2.9 / 1.2.10 dependency problem).
  • You may want to use a different logging provider (i.e. network distributed logging)
  • You want your logging for Unit and Integration tests to redirect to the Console or Debug logger without any configuraiton.

ServiceStack.Logging solves these problems by providing an implementation-free ILog interface that your application logic can bind to where your Application Host project can bind to the concrete logging implementation at deploy or runtime.

ServiceStack.Logging also includes adapters for the following logging providers:

  • Log4Net 1.2.10+
  • Log4Net 1.2.9
  • EventLog
  • Console Log
  • Debug Log
  • Null / Empty Log

Usage Examples

Once on your App Startup, either In your AppHost.cs or Global.asax file inject the concrete logging implementation that your app should use, e.g.

Log4Net

    LogManager.LogFactory = new Log4NetFactory(true); //Also runs log4net.Config.XmlConfigurator.Configure()

Event Log

    LogManager.LogFactory = new EventLogFactory("ServiceStack.Logging.Tests", "Application");

Then your application logic can bind to and use a lightweight implementation-free ILog which at runtime will be an instance of the concrete implementation configured in your host:

    ILog log = LogManager.GetLogger(GetType());

    log.Debug("Debug Event Log Entry.");
    log.Warn("Warning Event Log Entry.");


  1. Getting Started
    1. Create your first webservice
    2. Your first webservice explained
    3. ServiceStack's new API Design
    4. Designing a REST-ful service with ServiceStack
    5. Example Projects Overview
  2. Reference
    1. Order of Operations
    2. The IoC container
    3. Metadata page
    4. Rest, SOAP & default endpoints
    5. SOAP support
    6. Routing
    7. Service return types
    8. Customize HTTP Responses
    9. Plugins
    10. Validation
    11. Error Handling
    12. Security
  3. Clients
    1. Overview
    2. C# client
    3. Silverlight client
    4. JavaScript client
    5. Dart Client
    6. MQ Clients
  4. Formats
    1. Overview
    2. JSON/JSV and XML
    3. ServiceStack's new HTML5 Report Format
    4. ServiceStack's new CSV Format
    5. MessagePack Format
    6. ProtoBuf Format
  5. View Engines 4. Razor & Markdown Razor
    1. Markdown Razor
  6. Hosts
    1. IIS
    2. Self-hosting
    3. Mono
  7. Security
    1. Authentication/authorization
    2. Sessions
    3. Restricting Services
  8. Advanced
    1. Configuration options
    2. Access HTTP specific features in services
    3. Logging
    4. Serialization/deserialization
    5. Request/response filters
    6. Filter attributes
    7. Concurrency Model
    8. Built-in caching options
    9. Built-in profiling
    10. Messaging and Redis
    11. Form Hijacking Prevention
    12. Auto-Mapping
    13. HTTP Utils
    14. Virtual File System
    15. Config API
    16. Physical Project Structure
    17. Modularizing Services
    18. MVC Integration
  9. Plugins 3. Request logger 4. Swagger API
  10. Tests
    1. Testing
    2. HowTo write unit/integration tests
  11. Other Languages
    1. FSharp
    2. VB.NET
  12. Use Cases
    1. Single Page Apps
    2. Azure
    3. Logging
    4. Bundling and Minification
    5. NHibernate
  13. Performance
    1. Real world performance
  14. How To
    1. Sending stream to ServiceStack
    2. Setting UserAgent in ServiceStack JsonServiceClient
    3. ServiceStack adding to allowed file extensions
    4. Default web service page how to
  15. Future
    1. Roadmap

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