Logging

Logging Providers

Chaos utilizes the NLog logging framework to provide a robust logging system. The default configuration is set to log concise and simplified messages to the console, with more detailed information being logged to a file using structured logging. This can be changed by modifying the appsettings.logging.json file. Continue reading to learn how to enable another built in log target.

Chaos makes great use of object destructuring, combined with NLogs object transformers. If there is a desire to swap the logging provider to something like Serilog, you will need to replace this behavior with the .Destructure.ByTransforming<T>feature in Program.cs. You will also need to find a suitable replacement for the LogEvent class.

This structured/destructured style of logging data can be more easily viewed via logging tools like ElasticSearch or Seq.

Seq

Seq is by far the simpler of these two tools, and due to this there is a built in way to enable logging to it.
To quickly and easily enable Seq, set the configuration value Logging:UseSeq to true, and enter the details of your Seq instance in the appsettings.seq.json files. They are preconfigured to use the default values for a local Seq instance.

There is also a tool in this repo that can be used to configure seq for use with chaos-server. Look for Tools\SeqConfigurator. Simply replace the hostname and apikey at the top of Program.cs and run the tool. It will add a dashboard and signals related to logging topics.

ElasticSearch

While the ELK stack(ElasticSearch, LogStash, Kibana) will be the more familiar tool to experienced developers, it can be difficult for the less experienced to setup and configure. For this reason, if you want to use the ELK stack in chaos, you will need to set it up yourself.