Serilog.Sinks.Json

Notice

This package is being made obsolete. The 2.1+ versions of the File, Rolling File and Console sinks now all have configuration overloads that accept an ITextFormatter.

For example, for Serilog.Sinks.File version 2.1.0 and above, the following configuration is equivalent to JsonFile from this package:

Log.Logger = new LoggerConfiguration()
    .WriteTo.File(new JsonFormatter(), "./my-app-log.json")
    .CreateLogger();

The XML <appSettings> support in Serilog.Settings.AppSettings 2.0 and above will accept a formatter type name:

<appSettings>
  <add key="serilog:write-to:File.path" value="./my-app-log.json" />
  <add key="serilog:write-to:File.formatter"
       value="Serilog.Formatting.Json.JsonFormatter, Serilog" />

Because of the better long-term prospects of the built-in support, this package is no longer recommended for use and is not being maintained.

Usage

Outputs Serilog events in a lossless JSON format. This is useful for local logging when files may later be analyzed mechanically, or when running on a platform that collects stdout as a log stream (i.e. Docker).

{"Timestamp":"2016-05-03T10:43:07.6408174+10:00","Level":"Information",
 "MessageTemplate":"Hello, world from {Username}!","Properties":{"Username":"nblumhardt"}}

Serilog has sinks that write text to log files or the console. These can accept a standard Serilog JsonFormatter in place of the default text formatter, but doing this is not easily discoverable, nor compatible with the current <appSettings> and config.json configuration readers.

This package adds extension methods to LoggerConfiguration for directly creating JSON variants of the standard console, file and rolling file sinks.

Installing

All three wrappers are in the Serilog.Sinks.Json package.

Install-Package Serilog.Sinks.Json -Pre -DependencyVersion Highest

Note: on the regular CLR platforms (.NET 4.5.1 etc.) the package targets Serilog 1.5. On .NET Core, Serilog 2.0.0-beta is targeted. Installation may sometimes require manually adding a reference to System.Runtime.dll and System.IO.dll from the Profile259 reference assemblies before installing the package, and manually removing the references afterwards. Hopefully the tooling around this will be tidied up soon.

Console

In code:

Log.Logger = new LoggerConfiguration()
    .WriteTo.JsonConsole()
    .CreateLogger();

In XML:

<configuration>
	<appSettings>
		<add key="serilog:using:Json" value="Serilog.Sinks.Json" />
		<add key="serilog:write-to:JsonConsole" />
	</appSettings>
</configuration>

See also: Serilog.Sinks.Console.

File

The file format produced is a newline-separated JSON stream, hence the .jsnl extension used in the examples.

In code:

Log.Logger = new LoggerConfiguration()
    .WriteTo.JsonFile(@"C:\Logs\myapp.jsnl")
	.CreateLogger();

In XML:

<configuration>
	<appSettings>
		<add key="serilog:using:Json" value="Serilog.Sinks.Json" />
		<add key="serilog:write-to:JsonFile.path" value="C:\Logs\myapp.jsnl" />
	</appSettings>
</configuration>

See also: Serilog.Sinks.File.

Rolling File

The file format produced is a newline-separated JSON stream, hence the .jsnl extension used in the examples.

Log.Logger = new LoggerConfiguration()
    .WriteTo.JsonRollingFile(@"C:\Logs\myapp-{Date}.jsnl")
	.CreateLogger();

In XML:

<configuration>
	<appSettings>
		<add key="serilog:using:Json" value="Serilog.Sinks.Json" />
		<add key="serilog:write-to:JsonRollingFile.pathFormat" value="C:\Logs\myapp-{Date}.jsnl" />
	</appSettings>
</configuration>

See also: Serilog.Sinks.RollingFile.