Using a standard Logger, as opposed to creating your own custom logging, has great advantages. The Open Source community has created two Logfile Reading Applications that can be used with Log4Net.
LogFactor5 is a Java application that is a part of the Log4J distribution. You can download it at http://jakarta.apache.org/log4j/docs/lf5/overviewl. Figure 8-4 shows what LogFactor5 looks like.
Using the ConversionPattern and FileAppender in Listing 8.21 will format the logfile so that LogFactor5 will work with it.
<appender name="FileAppender" type="log4net.Appender.FileAppender"> <param name="File" value="log-file.txt" /> <param name="AppendToFile" value="true" /> <layout type="log4net.Layout.PatternLayout"> <param name="ConversionPattern" value="[slf5s.start]%d{DATE}[slf5s.DATE]%n\%p[slf5s.PRIORITY]%n%x[slf5s .NDC]%n%t[slf5s.THREAD]%n%c[slf5s.CATEGORY]%n\%l[slf5s.LOCATION]%n%m[sl f5s.MESSAGE]%n%n" /> </layout> </appender>
LogFactor5 is not very actively developed compared to Chainsaw.
If a C# application suits you better, there is an Open Source project that will listen for input from Log4Net's UdpAppender.
Network Log Client (http://sourceforge.net/projects/netlogclient/) is a simple but effective graphical viewer for logged messages, as shown in Figure 8-5.
Chainsaw (Figure 8-6) is another Java application that can be used to read log files. This application can be downloaded from http://sourceforge.net/projects/logui or as part of the Log4J package.
Chainsaw supports the following configurations:
UDPAppender By default Chainsaw uses port 4445.
XMLLayout Format As shown in Listing 8.6.
Chainsaw is being actively developed and is a nice cross-platform user interface log reader that gathers information from multiple clients nicely.