Getting Started with the Log4net Insight Extension

We’ve added support for the Log4net appender. This allows you to leverage your current investment in log4net, but leverage the power and flexibility that comes with the ReflectInsight viewer. You can view your log4net messages in real-time, in a rich viewer that allows you to filter out and search for what really matters to you.

The log4net extension supports Log4net v1.2.11.0. However if you need to support an older version, then you will need to download the ReflectInsight Logging Extensions Library from CodePlex. You can then reference and rebuild the extension against a specific release of the log4net DLL.

Log4net Configuration

1. Download the ReflectInsight Extension Binaries or Source and rebuild if necessary.

2. Once you have the ReflectInsight Extensions, go to your project in Visual Studio and add a reference to ReflectSoftware.Insight.Extensions.Log4net.dll.

3. The next step is to configure your app or web configuration file and incorporate the ReflectInsight appender. If you don’t already have an App.config or Web.config, add it. Then open the configuration file and add a new config section as shown here:

4. Now you need to add another configuration file to your project for the Insight configuration. Typically this is called Insight.config.

5. Now that you’ve added the Insight configuration file to your project, we’ll need to add an entry to your app/web configuration file to reference it:

6. Now you need to configure your log4net configuration with an reference to the ReflectInsight Appender. Update your log4net section with the following:

7. That’s it, you’re done!

8. For an even easier setup and configuration, try using our NuGet package which will automate all of this for you.

NuGet Package

We’ve created a NuGet package for our Log4net extension. You can find it over on Nuget.

To install ReflectSoftware.Insight.Extensions.Log4net extension, run the following command in the Package Manager Console.

References

Documentation

Documentation for our ReflectInsight Viewer is available here.
Documentation for our ReflectInsight Logging Extensions can be found here.

Feedback

Feedback on our Insight Extensions or the ReflectInsight Viewer can be done on our UserVoice site.

ReflectInsight Viewer Download

The ReflectInsight Viewer can be download from here.