Question

Let’s say I’m working on a little batch-processing console app in VB.Net. I want to be able to structure the app like this:

Sub WorkerMethod()    'Do some work    Trace.WriteLine('Work progress')     'Do more work    Trace.WriteLine('Another progress update')     '... End Sub   Sub Main()     'Do any setup, like confirm the user wants to continue or whatever     WorkerMethod()       End Sub 

Note that I’m using Trace rather than Console for my output. This is because the worker method may be called from elsewhere, or even live in a different assembly, and I want to be able to attach different trace listeners to it. So how can I connect the console to the trace?

I can already do it by defining a simple class (shown below) and adding an instance to the Trace’s listeners collection, but I’m wondering if there’s a more accepted or built in way to accomplish this:

Public Class ConsoleTrace     Inherits Diagnostics.TraceListener      Public Overloads Overrides Sub Write(ByVal message As String)         Console.Write(message)     End Sub      Public Overloads Overrides Sub WriteLine(ByVal message As String)         Console.WriteLine(message)     End Sub End Class 

Answer 1

You can add the following to your exe’s .config file.

<?xml version='1.0'?> <configuration>     <system.diagnostics>         <trace autoflush='true'>             <listeners>                 <add name='logListener' type='System.Diagnostics.TextWriterTraceListener' initializeData='cat.log' />                 <add name='consoleListener' type='System.Diagnostics.ConsoleTraceListener'/>             </listeners>         </trace>     </system.diagnostics> </configuration> 

I included the TextWriter as well, in case you’re interested in logging to a file.