Log4Net "Could not find schema information" messages

Question

You can bind in a schema to the log4net element. There are a few floating around, most do not fully provide for the various options available. I created the following xsd to provide as much verification as possible: http://csharptest.net/downloads/schema/log4net.xsd

You can bind it into the xml easily by modifying the log4net element:

<log4net 
     xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="http://csharptest.net/downloads/schema/log4net.xsd" 
     xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">

I had a different take, and needed the following syntax:

[assembly: log4net.Config.XmlConfigurator(ConfigFile = "log4net.xml", Watch = true)]

which differs from xsl's last post, but made a difference for me. Check out this blog post, it helped me out.

Just a word of warning to anyone follow the advice of the answers in this thread. There is a possible security risk by having the log4net configuration in an xml off the root of the web service, as it will be accessible to anyone by default. Just be advised if your configuration contains sensitive data, you may want to put it else where.

I believe you are seeing the message because Visual Studio doesn't know how to validate the log4net section of the config file. You should be able to fix this by copying the log4net XSD into C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\XML\Schemas (or wherever your Visual Studio is installed). As an added bonus you should now get intellisense support for log4net

In Roger's answer, where he provided a schema, this worked very well for me except where a commenter mentioned

This XSD is complaining about the use of custom appenders. It only allows for an appender from the default set (defined as an enum) instead of simply making this a string field

I modified the original schema which had a xs:simpletype named log4netAppenderTypes and removed the enumerations. I instead restricted it to a basic .NET typing pattern (I say basic because it just supports typename only, or typename, assembly -- however someone can extend it.

Simply replace the log4netAppenderTypes definition with the following in the XSD:

<xs:simpleType name="log4netAppenderTypes">
  <xs:restriction base="xs:string">
    <xs:pattern value="[A-Za-z_]\w*(\.[A-Za-z_]\w*)+(\s*,\s*[A-Za-z_]\w*(\.[A-Za-z_]\w*)+)?"/>
  </xs:restriction>
</xs:simpleType>

I'm passing this back on to the original author if he wants to include it in his official version. Until then you'd have to download and modify the xsd and reference it in a relative manner, for example:

<log4net
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="../../../Dependencies/log4net/log4net.xsd">
  <!-- ... -->
</log4net>

Actually you don't need to stick to the .xml extension. You can specify any other extension in the ConfigFileExtension attribute:

[assembly: log4net.Config.XmlConfigurator(ConfigFile = "log4net.config", ConfigFileExtension=".config", Watch = true)]