log4net: how to customize data to be stored

Question

I have few different web services exposed by my web site. Here is a goals I want to reach:

1. Store all data in DB in one table;
2. Each record should have text field with 'service/component' name;
3. It is necessary to store all income parameters when any method is called;
4. It is necessary to store all outcome parameters AND error messages if any exception is occurred.

My original intention was to use log4net. But from these walk-through (http://sadi02.wordpress.com/2008/09/15/how-to-store-log-in-database-using-log4net/, http://logging.apache.org/log4net/release/config-examples.html) I don't see an easy way to add custom data into log table.

Is it feasible to use log4net for such purposes? How can I change logging table schema to store custom data? Should I modify source code of log4net library? Probably would be better to write a custom functionality to store such kind of data?

Thanks.

Answer 1

According to this discussion, the process is pretty straightforward.

The first step is to update the command text in the appender declaration into your config file:

<commandText value="INSERT INTO Log4Net ([Date],[Thread],[Level],[Logger],[Message],[Exception],[MyColumn]) VALUES (@log_date, @thread, @log_level, @logger, @message, @exception,@MyColumn)"/>        

The next step is to and add a new parameter definition for the custom column:

<parameter>
   <parameterName value="@MyColumn "/>
   <dbType value="String" />
   <size value="255" />
   <layout type="log4net.Layout.PatternLayout">
      <conversionPattern value="%property{MyColumn}" />
   </layout>
</parameter>

Finally, you can access the value through the GlobalContext properties of log4net:

log4net.GlobalContext.Properties["MyColumn"] = "MyValue";
log.Debug("My message");

You can do this for as many fields as you need.

Answer 2

Neither of suggested answers works for me. The problem is that I need to have several custom fields. For me it seems too complicated to create different instances of logger or to setup column values each time through the 'properties'.

I will go (actually, already implemented) custom logger that put data in DB.