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    Serilog Config

    This article is only valid if you are using Umbraco 8 or previous versions.

    If you are using Umbraco 9 or later, the relevant article for you is found in the Configuration section.

    Serilog can be configured and extended by using the two XML configuration files on disk.

    • /config/serilog.config is used to modify the main Umbraco logging pipeline
    • /config/serilog.user.config which is a sublogger and allows you to make modifications without affecting the main Umbraco logger

    For more information on Serilog in v8, the docs are here.

    Changing the log level

    This can be done by adding the following into either serilog.config or the sub logger configuration file serilog.user.config

    <add key="serilog:minimum-level" value="Verbose" />

    If you change the main Umbraco logger in serilog.config to log only Warning you would not be able to have the serilog.user.config sub logger to be set to Debug. Having this setting only Warning messages and higher will flow down into the child sub logger.

    Changing the log level for specific namespaces

    This can be done by adding the following into either serilog.config or the sub logger configuration file serilog.user.config

    <add key="serilog:minimum-level:override:Microsoft" value="Warning" />
<add key="serilog:minimum-level:override:Microsoft.AspNet.Mvc" value="Error" />
<add key="serilog:minimum-level:override:MyNamespace" value="Information" />

    If you change the serilog:minimum-level to be Error then the following example above would only log Error messages from Microsoft.AspNet.Mvc and not any warning, info or debug messages from the Microsoft namespace

    Writing your own log messages to a custom file

    Add the following to the /config/serilog.user.config file, which will create a new JSON log file

    <!-- Write to a user log file -->
<add key="serilog:using:File" value="Serilog.Sinks.File" />
<add key="serilog:write-to:File.path" value="%BASEDIR%\my-logs\my-custom-logfile.txt" />
<add key="serilog:write-to:File.shared" value="true" />
<add key="serilog:write-to:File.restrictedToMinimumLevel" value="Debug" />
<add key="serilog:write-to:File.retainedFileCountLimit" value="32" /> <!-- Number of log files to keep (or remove value to keep all files) -->
<add key="serilog:write-to:File.rollingInterval" value="Day" /> <!-- Create a new log file every Minute/Hour/Day/Month/Year/infinite -->
<add key="serilog:write-to:File.outputTemplate" value="{Timestamp:yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss,fff} [P{ProcessId}/D{AppDomainId}/T{ThreadId}] {Log4NetLevel}  {SourceContext} - {Message:lj}{NewLine}{Exception}" />

    Filtering user log file to include only log messages from your namespace

    With the above example we are able to write to a separate JSON log file, but adding these additional lines to serilog.user.config will allow you to filter and include log messages. For further details on specific expressions you can write, refer to the readme of the Serilog Filters Expression project

    <!-- Filters all sink's in the serilog.user.config to use this expression -->
<!-- Common use case is to include SourceType starting with your own namespace -->
<add key="serilog:using:FilterExpressions" value="Serilog.Filters.Expressions" />
<add key="serilog:filter:ByIncludingOnly.expression" value="StartsWith(SourceContext, 'MyNamespace')" />

    Writing log events to different storage types

    Serilog has a similar concept to Log4Net with its appenders, which are referred to as Serilog Sinks. A Serilog Sink, allows you to persist the structured log message to a data store of your choice. In v8.0+ we use the Serilog.Sinks.File to allow us to write a .txt or .json file to disk. But the Serilog project and the wider Serilog community allows you to store these logs in various locations.

    An extensive list of examples can be found here

    For example you could install the Nuget package PM> Install-Package Serilog.Sinks.Seq and update the serilog.user.config file with the following XML snippet and if you already have the file example above it will write to that location as well as Seq.

    <add key="serilog:using:Seq" value="Serilog.Sinks.Seq" />
<add key="serilog:write-to:Seq.serverUrl" value="http://localhost:5341" />
<add key="serilog:write-to:Seq.apiKey" value="[optional API key here]" />

    Adding a custom log property to all log items

    You may wish to add a log property to all log messages. A good example could be a log property for the environment to determine if the log message came from development or production.

    This is useful when you could be writing logs from all environments or multiple customer projects into a single logging source, such as Elasticsearch. This would allow you to search and filter for a specific project and its environment to see the log messages. You can also reference your hosting server's environment variables in the property values.

    In the /config/serilog.user.config file you can add the following lines, which the values could be changed or transformed as needed.

    <add key="serilog:enrich:with-property:customer" value="Super Customer" />
<add key="serilog:enrich:with-property:environment" value="Production" />
<add key="serilog:enrich:with-property:deploymentId" value="%WEBSITE_DEPLOYMENT_ID%" /> <!-- reference your hosting server's environment variables, eg. if using Azure -->