Serilog.Sinks.Seq

A Serilog sink that writes events to the Seq structured log server.

Getting started

To get started install the Serilog.Sinks.Seq package from Visual Studio's NuGet console:

PM> Install-Package Serilog.Sinks.Seq

Point the logger to Seq:

Log.Logger = new LoggerConfiguration()
    .WriteTo.Seq("http://localhost:5341")
    .CreateLogger();

And use the Serilog logging methods to associate named properties with log events:

Log.Error("Failed to log on user {ContactId}", contactId);

Then query log event properties like ContactId from the browser:

The sink supports durable (disk-buffered) log shipping, and can take advantage of Seq's API keys to authenticate clients and dynamically attach properties to events at the server-side. Visit the full documentation for examples.

Configuring with XML

To adjust the Seq server URL at deployment time, it's often convenient to configure it using XML <appSettings>, in the App.config or Web.config file.

Before Serilog can be configured using XML, the Serilog.Settings.AppSettings package must be installed and enabled using the LoggerConfiguration:

Log.Logger = new LoggerConfiguration()
    .ReadFrom.AppSettings()
    .CreateLogger();

When XML is used for configuration, it's not necessary to include the WriteTo.Seq() method. It is important however that the Serilog.Sinks.Seq.dll assembly is present alongside the app's binaries.

The settings typically included are:

<configuration>
  <appSettings>
    <add key="serilog:using:Seq" value="Serilog.Sinks.Seq" />
    <add key="serilog:write-to:Seq.serverUrl" value="http://localhost:5341" />
    <add key="serilog:write-to:Seq.apiKey" value="[optional API key here]" />

Serilog's XML configuration has several other capabilities that are described on the Serilog wiki.