Question

I am using log4net in c# console app, and I was wondering if it was possible to have each log entry include the elapsed time since the last log entry?

Right now, I am using %-4timestamp (which I believe is the milliseconds since the start of the log) so I can spin through the log later and calculate the difference between an entry and the previous entry. I was hoping there was something I could use to get the elapsed time to appear in each log message though.

Is this possible?

Thanks in advance!

EDIT
To clarify the elapsed time, I mean the amount of time that has elapsed since the last time log4net has logged a message.

For example, if I have this log:

0    [main] INFO  MyApp  - Entering application.
36   [main] DEBUG Com.Foo.Bar  - Did it again!
51   [main] INFO  MyApp  - Exiting application.

Then the additional information I would like would be something like this:

0   (0)  [main] INFO  MyApp  - Entering application.
36  (36) [main] DEBUG Com.Foo.Bar  - Did it again!
51  (15) [main] INFO  MyApp  - Exiting application.

Where the extra value I added in between parenthesis is the elapsed time since the last log.

Answer 1

Why not just keep track of it and add it yourself?

Something like:

public static class LoggingWrapper
    {
        private static ILog logger;
        private DateTime timeOfLastLog;

        static LoggingWrapper()
        {
            logger = LogManager.GetLogger(typeof(Program));
            logger.Info("Logger initialized");
            timeOfLastLog = DateTime.Now;
        }

        public static void Debug(string Message)
        {
            logger = LogManager.GetLogger("YourDebugLoggerName");
            TimeSpan differential = DateTime.Now - timeOfLastLog();
            logger.Debug(Message + "-----" + differential.ToString());
        }
    }

Obviously youd want to customize a bit, but this is the basic idea. I always use a wrapper class to do logging, just because it adds customization capabilities. For example, I use it to do custom exception logging like this:

public static void LogException(Exception ex)
{
    logger = LogManager.GetLogger("NHibernate.SQL");
    logger.Error(ex.Message + Environment.NewLine + ex.InnerException + Environment.NewLine + ex.StackTrace, ex);
}

That way, when I want to log exception details, I can do something like:

try
{
    ThrowAnException();
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
    LoggingWrapper.LogException(ex);
}

instead of:

try
{
    ThrowAnException();
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
    LoggingWrapper.Error(ex.Message + Environment.NewLine + ex.InnerException + Environment.NewLine + ex.StackTrace);
}

And that’s just one example. There are quite a few other things that make this useful.