Logging Events in a Windows Service Program

Question

I have created a Windows service program and I want my error to strictly be written to the Windows eventLog. So I followed these steps from code project article:

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dotnet/simplewindowsservice.aspx

But I don't see any of the custom log messages I wrote in the event logs created in the event viewer window when I start or stop the service. Also how do I specify whether the message was due to an error or is just info?

Answer 1

First, MSDN is your friend. Make sure you check out the link, as there are some potential gotchas worth knowing.

Essentially, you create an EventLog object:

this.ServiceName = "MyService"; this.EventLog = new System.Diagnostics.EventLog(); this.EventLog.Source = this.ServiceName; this.EventLog.Log = "Application"; 

You also need to create a source, if the above source doesn't exist:

((ISupportInitialize)(this.EventLog)).BeginInit(); if (!EventLog.SourceExists(this.EventLog.Source)) {     EventLog.CreateEventSource(this.EventLog.Source, this.EventLog.Log); } ((ISupportInitialize)(this.EventLog)).EndInit(); 

and then simply use it:

this.EventLog.WriteEntry("My Eventlog message.", EventLogEntryType.Information); 

it's actually pretty simple.

Answer 2

I finally got this to work by combining various StackOverflow answers and from MSDN.

First include the following namespaces

using System.ComponentModel; using System.Diagnostics; 

Then setup logging in your constructor

    public UserService1()      {         //Setup Service         this.ServiceName = "MyService2";         this.CanStop = true;         this.CanPauseAndContinue = true;          //Setup logging         this.AutoLog = false;          ((ISupportInitialize) this.EventLog).BeginInit();         if (!EventLog.SourceExists(this.ServiceName))         {             EventLog.CreateEventSource(this.ServiceName, "Application");         }         ((ISupportInitialize) this.EventLog).EndInit();          this.EventLog.Source = this.ServiceName;         this.EventLog.Log = "Application";     } 

Use as follows:

    protected override void OnStart(string[] args)     {         base.OnStart(args);          this.EventLog.WriteEntry("In OnStart");     }