W3CLogger in ASP.NET Core

W3CLogger is a middleware that writes log files in the W3C standard format. The logs contain information about HTTP requests and HTTP responses. W3CLogger provides logs of:

• HTTP request information
• Common properties
• Headers
• HTTP response information
• Metadata about the request/response pair (date/time started, time taken)

W3CLogger is valuable in several scenarios to:

• Record information about incoming requests and responses.
• Filter which parts of the request and response are logged.
• Filter which headers to log.

W3CLogger can reduce the performance of an app. Consider the performance impact when selecting fields to log - the performance reduction will increase as you log more properties. Test the performance impact of the selected logging properties.

Enabling W3CLogger

W3CLogger is enabled with UseW3CLogging, which adds the W3CLogger middleware.

app.UseW3CLogging();

app.UseRouting();

app.MapGet("/", () => "Hello World!");

app.Run();

By default, W3CLogger logs common properties such as path, status-code, date, time, and protocol. All information about a single request/response pair is written to the same line.

#Version: 1.0
#Start-Date: 2021-09-29 22:18:28
#Fields: date time c-ip s-computername s-ip s-port cs-method cs-uri-stem cs-uri-query sc-status time-taken cs-version cs-host cs(User-Agent) cs(Referer)
2021-09-29 22:18:28 ::1 DESKTOP-LH3TLTA ::1 5000 GET / - 200 59.9171 HTTP/1.1 localhost:5000 Mozilla/5.0+(Windows+NT+10.0;+WOW64)+AppleWebKit/537.36+(KHTML,+like+Gecko)+Chrome/93.0.4577.82+Safari/537.36 -
2021-09-29 22:18:28 ::1 DESKTOP-LH3TLTA ::1 5000 GET / - 200 0.1802 HTTP/1.1 localhost:5000 Mozilla/5.0+(Windows+NT+10.0;+WOW64)+AppleWebKit/537.36+(KHTML,+like+Gecko)+Chrome/93.0.4577.82+Safari/537.36 -
2021-09-29 22:18:30 ::1 DESKTOP-LH3TLTA ::1 5000 GET / - 200 0.0966 HTTP/1.1 localhost:5000 Mozilla/5.0+(Windows+NT+10.0;+WOW64)+AppleWebKit/537.36+(KHTML,+like+Gecko)+Chrome/93.0.4577.82+Safari/537.36 -

W3CLogger options

To configure the W3CLogger middleware, call AddW3CLogging in ConfigureServices.

builder.Services.AddW3CLogging(logging =>
{
    // Log all W3C fields
    logging.LoggingFields = W3CLoggingFields.All;
    
    logging.FileSizeLimit = 5 * 1024 * 1024;
    logging.RetainedFileCountLimit = 2;
    logging.FileName = "MyLogFile";
    logging.LogDirectory = @"C:\logs";
    logging.FlushInterval = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(2);
});

LoggingFields

W3CLoggerOptions.LoggingFields is a bit flag enumeration that configures specific parts of the request and response to log, and other information about the connection. LoggingFields defaults to include all possible fields except UserName and Cookie.

builder.Services.AddW3CLogging(logging =>
{
    // Log all W3C fields
    logging.LoggingFields = W3CLoggingFields.All;
    
    logging.FileSizeLimit = 5 * 1024 * 1024;
    logging.RetainedFileCountLimit = 2;
    logging.FileName = "MyLogFile";
    logging.LogDirectory = @"C:\logs";
    logging.FlushInterval = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(2);
});

FileSizeLimit

Maximum log file size in bytes. Defaults to 10 MiB.

builder.Services.AddW3CLogging(logging =>
{
    // Log all W3C fields
    logging.LoggingFields = W3CLoggingFields.All;
    
    logging.FileSizeLimit = 5 * 1024 * 1024;
    logging.RetainedFileCountLimit = 2;
    logging.FileName = "MyLogFile";
    logging.LogDirectory = @"C:\logs";
    logging.FlushInterval = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(2);
});

RetainedFileCountLimit

Maximum number of files to keep on disk before rolling, per application. Defaults to 4, capped at 10,000.

builder.Services.AddW3CLogging(logging =>
{
    // Log all W3C fields
    logging.LoggingFields = W3CLoggingFields.All;
    
    logging.FileSizeLimit = 5 * 1024 * 1024;
    logging.RetainedFileCountLimit = 2;
    logging.FileName = "MyLogFile";
    logging.LogDirectory = @"C:\logs";
    logging.FlushInterval = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(2);
});

FileName

Prefix to be used for log file name. The current date plus a file number, in the format {YYYYMMDD.X}, will be appended.

builder.Services.AddW3CLogging(logging =>
{
    // Log all W3C fields
    logging.LoggingFields = W3CLoggingFields.All;
    
    logging.FileSizeLimit = 5 * 1024 * 1024;
    logging.RetainedFileCountLimit = 2;
    logging.FileName = "MyLogFile";
    logging.LogDirectory = @"C:\logs";
    logging.FlushInterval = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(2);
});

LogDirectory

Directory where the log file will be written to. Defaults to ./logs/, relative to the app directory.

builder.Services.AddW3CLogging(logging =>
{
    // Log all W3C fields
    logging.LoggingFields = W3CLoggingFields.All;
    
    logging.FileSizeLimit = 5 * 1024 * 1024;
    logging.RetainedFileCountLimit = 2;
    logging.FileName = "MyLogFile";
    logging.LogDirectory = @"C:\logs";
    logging.FlushInterval = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(2);
});

FlushInterval

The period after which logs will be flushed to the log file. Defaults to 1 second.

builder.Services.AddW3CLogging(logging =>
{
    // Log all W3C fields
    logging.LoggingFields = W3CLoggingFields.All;
    
    logging.FileSizeLimit = 5 * 1024 * 1024;
    logging.RetainedFileCountLimit = 2;
    logging.FileName = "MyLogFile";
    logging.LogDirectory = @"C:\logs";
    logging.FlushInterval = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(2);
});