How can I log into a text file(not xml) on my Azure BlobStorage using log4net?

Question

So I'm already logging (log4net) on my own machine using the following configuration

<appender name="LogFileAppender" type="log4net.Appender.RollingFileAppender">
  <param name="File" value="mylog.txt" />
  <param name="AppendToFile" value="true" />
  <rollingStyle value="Size" />
  <maxSizeRollBackups value="10" />
  <maximumFileSize value="5MB" />
  <staticLogFileName value="true" />
  <layout type="log4net.Layout.PatternLayout">
    <param name="ConversionPattern" value="%date [%thread] %-5level %logger [%M %C] - %message%newline" />
  </layout>
</appender>

Just to test log4net and make sure everything is working, now I want to log on my Azure blob storage, I'm using log4net.Appender.Azure nuget package and it did log to my blob storage using this configuration:

<appender name="AzureBlobAppender" type="log4net.Appender.AzureBlobAppender, log4net.Appender.Azure">
  <param name="ContainerName" value="testblob" />
  <param name="DirectoryName" value="logs/" />
  <!-- You can either specify a connection string or use the ConnectionStringName property instead -->
  <param name="ConnectionString" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true;" />
  <!--<param name="ConnectionStringName" value="GlobalConfigurationString" />-->
  <bufferSize value="5" />
</appender>

But this configuration left me with many XML files instead of ONE text file so is there a way to do that? I searched around but found nothing related to this.

EDIT: So to append the xml into only one can be done using the following configuration

<appender name="AzureAppendBlobAppender" type="log4net.Appender.AzureAppendBlobAppender, log4net.Appender.Azure">
  <param name="ContainerName" value="testloggingblob"/>
  <param name="DirectoryName" value="logs"/>
  <!-- You can either specify a connection string or use the ConnectionStringName property instead -->
  <param name="ConnectionString" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true"/>
  <!--<param name="ConnectionStringName" value="GlobalConfigurationString" />-->
</appender>

But this did not work for me because im using the Azure Storage Emulator and the Append Blob operations are not supported by the emulator currently.

Still no idea how to go from XML to text file.

Can you provide details on what you are trying to accomplish ? Is it appending the content of multiple XML files in to a one single text file ? — Adam Smith - Microsoft Azure
I want my solution to append its log on a text file on Azure, using this library I can either write it or append it on azure but only in an XML file (in case what im trying to accomplish is not yet clear I can explain further) — Ali_Nass

Harry Hu Harry Hu · Accepted Answer · 2021-02-01T00:23:47

use AzureAppendBlobAppender will log into one file per day, but still inside the file it's all XML entries. If you want to use the layout option, clone the source code from that link and change the source code of AzureAppendBlobAppender and build your own appender

private void ProcessEvent(LoggingEvent loggingEvent)
{
    CloudAppendBlob appendBlob = _cloudBlobContainer.GetAppendBlobReference(Filename(_directoryName));
    string content;
    try
    {
        content = _lineFeed + RenderLoggingEvent(loggingEvent);
    }catch(InvalidOperationException e)
    {
        //if no layout set, using xml
        content = _lineFeed + loggingEvent.GetXmlString(Layout);
    }
    using (MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(content)))
    {
        appendBlob.AppendBlock(ms);
    }
}

Then you will be able to use your layout config inside of appender

  <layout type="log4net.Layout.PatternLayout">
    <param name="ConversionPattern" value="%date [%thread] %-5level %logger [%M %C] - %message%newline" />
  </layout>

How can I log into a text file(not xml) on my Azure BlobStorage using log4net?

2 Answers