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New Relic .NET Logging Extensions for log4net

The .NET Extensions for log4net will add contextual information from the .NET Agent to Application Log Messages, output them in the New Relic's expected JSON format, and send them to the New Relic Logging endpoint.

Minimum Requirements

Recommended Components

Overview

log4net uses appender and layout to store and format log messages. This project provides NewRelicAppender which enriches log messages with contextual information from the New Relic .NET Agent if it is attached to your application. This appender will pass enriched log messages to downstream appenders for specific use case log message handle. This project also provides NewRelicLayout to output log messages in the way required by the New Relic logging endpoint. A target can then be configured to write logging data to an output folder, which can be monitored by a log forwarder to incrementally send log information to New Relic.

Architecture Diagram

New Relic Appender

The NewRelicAppender adds contextual information from the .NET Agent (using the API) to the Log Events generated by the application. This contextual information, known as Linking Metadata, is used by New Relic to link log messages to the transactions and spans from which they were created. This appender will pass the enriched Log Events to downstream appenders for further processing. Since NewRelicAppender is ForwardingAppender type, it needs to be the first appender in the chain and requires another appender that can write to an actual output destination as its child in order to work.

New Relic Layout

The NewRelicLayout formats the enriched Log Events into JSON format expected by New Relic. The appender, which this layout is assigned to, instructs log4net to output the JSON to a file in the location that the Log Forwarder expects.

New Relic Log Forwarder

The Log Forwarder monitors an output folder and incrementally sends New Relic formatted Log information to the New Relic Logging Endpoint. There are many log-forwarders available. For our examples, we will use Fluentd.

Configuration

Configuration of the New Relic extensions for log4net may be accomplished via log4net configuration files. Complete documentation of what log4net configuration information can be found here.

<log4net>
  <root>
    <level value="ALL" />
    <appender-ref ref="NewRelicAppender" />
  </root>

  <appender name="NewRelicAppender" type="NewRelic.LogEnrichers.Log4Net.NewRelicAppender, NewRelic.LogEnrichers.Log4Net" >
    <threshold value="ALL"/>
    <appender-ref ref="FileAppender" />
  </appender>

  <appender name="FileAppender" type="log4net.Appender.FileAppender">
    <file type="log4net.Util.PatternString" value="%property{NewRelicLogFileName}" />
    <param name="AppendToFile" value="true" />
    <!-- uncomment the next line to get UTF-8 logs if using .NET Framework -->
    <!-- <encoding type="System.Text.UTF8Encoding"/> -->
    <layout type="NewRelic.LogEnrichers.Log4Net.NewRelicLayout, NewRelic.LogEnrichers.Log4Net">
    </layout>
  </appender>
</log4net>

Configuration in App.config

The example code below creates a logger based on settings contained in an App.config file.

Sample App.config

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
  <configSections>
    <section name="log4net" type="log4net.Config.Log4NetConfigurationSectionHandler, log4net"/>
  </configSections>
  <log4net>
    <root>
      <level value="ALL" />
      <appender-ref ref="NewRelicAppender" />
    </root>
    <appender name="NewRelicAppender" type="NewRelic.LogEnrichers.Log4Net.NewRelicAppender, NewRelic.LogEnrichers.Log4Net" >
      <threshold value="ALL"/>
      <appender-ref ref="FileAppender" />
    </appender>
    <appender name="FileAppender" type="log4net.Appender.FileAppender">
      <file type="log4net.Util.PatternString" value="%property{NewRelicLogFileName}" />
      <param name="AppendToFile" value="true" />
      <!-- uncomment the next line to get UTF-8 logs if using .NET Framework -->
      <!-- <encoding type="System.Text.UTF8Encoding"/> -->
      <layout type="NewRelic.LogEnrichers.Log4Net.NewRelicLayout, NewRelic.LogEnrichers.Log4Net">
      </layout>
    </appender>
  </log4net>  
</configuration>

Configuring the Fluentd Log Forwarder

Based on the Fornatter and Sink Configuration described above, the following Fluentd configuration can be used to send logs to New Relic.

<!--NewRelicLoggingExample.conf-->
<source> 
    @type tail 
    path C:\logs\Log4NetExample.log.json
    pos_file C:\logs\Log4NetExample.log.json.pos 
    tag logfile.*
 <parse> 
    @type json 
</parse>
</source>
<match **> 
    @type newrelic 
    license_key <YOUR NEW_RELIC_LICENSE_KEY>
    base_uri https://log-api.newrelic.com/log/v1
</match>