Useful NLog Targets – Andrey Zavadskiy – SQL and .NET developer, trainer, speaker

NLog has many targets to which it can save log entries. Here are some that I consider quite useful.

File

<target name="logfile"
        xsi:type="File"
        fileName="${basedir}/logs/current.log"
        archiveFileName="${basedir}/logs/${shortdate}.{#}.log"
        archiveAboveSize="5242880"
        archiveEvery="Day"
        archiveNumbering="Rolling"
        maxArchiveFiles="0" />

<target name="logfile"

xsi:type="File"

fileName="${basedir}/logs/current.log"

archiveFileName="${basedir}/logs/${shortdate}.{#}.log"

archiveAboveSize="5242880"

archiveEvery="Day"

archiveNumbering="Rolling"

maxArchiveFiles="0" />

I’ve added some parameters to archive log on everyday basis.

EventLog

<target name="eventlog"
        xsi:type="EventLog"
        log="MyAppLog"
        source="MyAppLog"
        layout="${message}${newline}${exception:format=ToString}"/>

<target name="eventlog"

xsi:type="EventLog"

log="MyAppLog"

source="MyAppLog"

layout="${message}${newline}${exception:format=ToString}"/>

NLog will create custom application log MyAppLog.

Visual Studio Debug window

<target name="debugger" 
        xsi:type="Debugger" 
        layout="${logger}::${message}"/>

<target name="debugger"

xsi:type="Debugger"

layout="${logger}::${message}"/>

Also NLog allows to save log in a database table, but it needs more efforts and lines of code to setup it. You can read more in the article Database target in NLog project documentation.

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