Skip to main content

Azure Application Insights–Structured logging

I think that everyone agrees when I say that logging and monitoring are important for almost every application. My preferred way is to use a 'Structured logging' approach in favor of the non-structured logging alternative.

Structured vs non-structured logging

With non-structured logging, the log message itself is handled as a string. . This makes it hard to query or filter your log messages for any sort of useful information. With structured logging, log messages are written in a structured format that can be easily parsed. This could be XML, JSON, or other formats. But since virtually everything these days is JSON, you are most likely to see JSON as the standard format for structured logging.

A popular library that introduced the structured logging approach in .NET is Serilog. Starting from .NET 5, it became available out-of-the-box as part of the Microsoft.Extensions.Logging package.

Here is an example where we are using structured logging using the default ILogger:

How does Application Insights handles a Structured logging message?

As I'm using Azure Application Insights to send my log messages to, I was wondering how Application Insights handles structured log messages.

It turns out that Application Insights is perfectly capable of handling this kind of messages. It will capture the original message template (see OriginalFormat) and adds a custom property to the message (see productId):

Inside the Azure Portal, the extra data is available inside the Custom Properties section:

Great!

Popular posts from this blog

Azure DevOps/ GitHub emoji

I’m really bad at remembering emoji’s. So here is cheat sheet with all emoji’s that can be used in tools that support the github emoji markdown markup: All credits go to rcaviers who created this list.

Kubernetes–Limit your environmental impact

Reducing the carbon footprint and CO2 emission of our (cloud) workloads, is a responsibility of all of us. If you are running a Kubernetes cluster, have a look at Kube-Green . kube-green is a simple Kubernetes operator that automatically shuts down (some of) your pods when you don't need them. A single pod produces about 11 Kg CO2eq per year( here the calculation). Reason enough to give it a try! Installing kube-green in your cluster The easiest way to install the operator in your cluster is through kubectl. We first need to install a cert-manager: kubectl apply -f https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/releases/download/v1.14.5/cert-manager.yaml Remark: Wait a minute before you continue as it can take some time before the cert-manager is up & running inside your cluster. Now we can install the kube-green operator: kubectl apply -f https://github.com/kube-green/kube-green/releases/latest/download/kube-green.yaml Now in the namespace where we want t

DevToys–A swiss army knife for developers

As a developer there are a lot of small tasks you need to do as part of your coding, debugging and testing activities.  DevToys is an offline windows app that tries to help you with these tasks. Instead of using different websites you get a fully offline experience offering help for a large list of tasks. Many tools are available. Here is the current list: Converters JSON <> YAML Timestamp Number Base Cron Parser Encoders / Decoders HTML URL Base64 Text & Image GZip JWT Decoder Formatters JSON SQL XML Generators Hash (MD5, SHA1, SHA256, SHA512) UUID 1 and 4 Lorem Ipsum Checksum Text Escape / Unescape Inspector & Case Converter Regex Tester Text Comparer XML Validator Markdown Preview Graphic Color B