How to write log file in c#?

Question

How would I write a log file in c#?

Currently i have a timer with this statement which ticks every 20 secs:

File.WriteAllText(filePath+"log.txt", log);

For everything that i want logged i do this:

log += "stringToBeLogged";

As you can assume the string log just grows and grows as the program runs. (I don't even know if there is a maximum chars per string?)

I assume that there must be better ways of doing this. i just thought that it would be heavy to write the whole file again and again for every time something is added to the log.

Answer 1

public static void WriteLog(string strLog)
    {
        StreamWriter log;
        FileStream fileStream = null;
        DirectoryInfo logDirInfo = null;
        FileInfo logFileInfo;

        string logFilePath = "C:\\Logs\\";
        logFilePath = logFilePath + "Log-" + System.DateTime.Today.ToString("MM-dd-yyyy") + "." + "txt";           
        logFileInfo = new FileInfo(logFilePath);
        logDirInfo = new DirectoryInfo(logFileInfo.DirectoryName);
        if (!logDirInfo.Exists) logDirInfo.Create();
        if (!logFileInfo.Exists)
        {
            fileStream = logFileInfo.Create();
        }
        else
        {
            fileStream = new FileStream(logFilePath, FileMode.Append);
        }
        log = new StreamWriter(fileStream);
        log.WriteLine(strLog);
        log.Close();
    }   

Refer Link: blogspot.in

Answer 2

This is add new string in the file

using (var file = new StreamWriter(filePath + "log.txt", true))
        {
            file.WriteLine(log);
            file.Close();
        }

Answer 3

From the performance point of view your solution is not optimal. Every time you add another log entry with +=, the whole string is copied to another place in memory. I would recommend using StringBuilder instead:

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
...
sb.Append("log something");

...
// flush every 20 seconds as you do it
File.AppendAllText(filePath+"log.txt", sb.ToString());
sb.Clear();

By the way your timer event is probably executed on another thread. So you may want to use a mutex when accessing your sb object.

Another thing to consider is what happens to the log entries that were added within the last 20 seconds of the execution. You probably want to flush your string to the file right before the app exits.

Answer 4

Use File.AppendAllText instead:

File.AppendAllText(filePath + "log.txt", log);

Answer 5

as posted by @randymohan, with using statements instead

public static void WriteLog(string strLog)
{
    string logFilePath = @"C:\Logs\Log-" + System.DateTime.Today.ToString("MM-dd-yyyy") + "." + "txt";
    FileInfo logFileInfo = new FileInfo(logFilePath);
    DirectoryInfo logDirInfo = new DirectoryInfo(logFileInfo.DirectoryName);
    if (!logDirInfo.Exists) logDirInfo.Create();
    using (FileStream fileStream = new FileStream(logFilePath, FileMode.Append))
    {
        using (StreamWriter log = new StreamWriter(fileStream))
        {
            log.WriteLine(strLog);
        }
    }
}

Answer 6

Very convenient tool for logging is http://logging.apache.org/log4net/

You can also make something of themselves less (more) powerful. You can use http://msdn.microsoft.com/ru-ru/library/system.io.filestream (v = vs.110). Aspx