Question

I’m using my own custom TextWriterTraceListener for adding timestamp to each logged line so that the output looks like this:

  LoggingExperiments.exe Information: 0 : 13:11 Testing infos
  LoggingExperiments.exe Error: 0 : 13:11   Testing errors

Here is the code:

class CustomTextWriterTraceListener : TextWriterTraceListener
{
    public CustomTextWriterTraceListener(string file) : base(file) 
    {            
    }        

    public override void WriteLine(string message)
    {            
        base.Write(DateTime.Now.ToShortTimeString());
        base.Write("\t");
        base.WriteLine(message); // #1
        Writer.WriteLine(message); // #2
    }
}

How to format the output so that it doesn’t have leading executable names on each line? Or to change the order of information logged?

Should I always call “Writer.WriteLine” and format it’s parameters (comment #2) or there is some other way to override this behavior and stay with calling base methods like in code marked as #1.

Answer 1

Can’t reproduce your behavior…
I’ve tried this code :

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Collections;

namespace TraceExample
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            CustomTraceListener c = new CustomTraceListener("log.txt");
            Trace.Listeners.Add(c);
            Trace.WriteLine("WriteLine","Info");
            Trace.Flush();
        }
    }

    public class CustomTraceListener : TextWriterTraceListener
    {
        public CustomTraceListener(string file) : base(file){}    
        public override void WriteLine(string message)
        {
            base.Write(DateTime.Now.ToShortTimeString());
            base.Write("\t");
            base.WriteLine(message); // #1
            Writer.WriteLine(message); // #2
        }
    }
}

And Output is :

You can do in configuration file :

17.02   Info: WriteLine
Info: WriteLine



<configuration>
  <system.diagnostics>
    <trace autoflush="false" indentsize="4">
      <listeners>
        <add name="consoleListener"
          type="System.Diagnostics.ConsoleTraceListener" 
          traceOutputOptions="ProcessId, DateTime" />
      </listeners>
    </trace>
  </system.diagnostics>
</configuration>

Take a look at traceOutputOptions

Here the MSDN reference