A TraceListener that sends messages via UDP

Introduction

Generating application log messages is important for diagnosing and testing a system, and a must for complex and large systems. .NET framework currently provides EventLogTraceListener and TextWriterTraceListener, which work fine for desktop applications; but for more complex server applications which need to be monitored/tested remotely, there is no solution.

Hence, I wrote this small utility NetTraceListener class that extends from TraceListener and outputs log messages to a defined UDP port.

Requirement

You would require a basic UDP notes collector to see the UDP messages.

Code

The entire source file is written in less than 20 lines of code.

The constructor takes a host name (e.g., "127.0.0.1") and a port number, it creates a UDPClient object that is used to send UDP messages.

UdpClient notifier; 
IPEndPoint groupEP; 
public TraceNetListener( string host, int port ) 
{
 groupEP = new IPEndPoint( IPAddress.Parse( host ) ,port );
 notifier = new UdpClient(); 
}

The overridden method Close():

public override void Close() 
{ 
    notifier.Close(); 
    base.Close ();
}

The overridden method Write(), it converts the supplied message into bytes, and sends them over a UDP channel.

public override void Write(string message) 
{
 try 
 {
  byte[] bytes = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(message);
  notifier.Send(bytes, bytes.Length, groupEP);
 } 
 catch (Exception e) 
 {} 
}

Now in your main application, you need to add this class as a trace listener.

Trace.Listeners.Add( new TraceNetListener("127.0.0.1", 11000 )); 
Trace.Write("HELLO WORLD !");

And you are all set. When you execute this code, your UDP NoteCollector will get all your trace messages.

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)