EventLogHelper 2025.7.26.13

EventLogHelper

EventLogHelper is a lightweight .NET library designed to make logging to the Windows Event Log simple, safe, and flexible — without requiring repetitive boilerplate or administrative headaches.

🚀 Features

• ✅ One-line logging to the Windows Event Log
• ✅ Automatically creates event sources (with safe fall back)
• ✅ Works in non-elevated environments
• ✅ Configurable defaults via App.config or Web.config
• ✅ Gracefully handles permission issues and registry conflicts
• ✅ Supports structured messages and custom log levels

💡 Why Use EventLogHelper?

The built-in .NET System.Diagnostics.EventLog API requires:

• Admin rights to create sources
• Manually checking for source/log conflicts
• Verbose, repeated code everywhere you want to log

EventLogHelper abstracts all that into a single method call, with smart defaults and self-healing behavior.

🛠️ Installation

You can add EventLogHelper to your project by cloning or adding the source file directly (NuGet package coming soon).

🧾 Example Usage

using EventLogHelper;

SmartEventLogger.Log("App started.");
SmartEventLogger.Log("Invalid user input", EventLogEntryType.Warning);
SmartEventLogger.Log("Fatal error", EventLogEntryType.Error);

You can optionally specify the source and log:

SmartEventLogger.Log("Service initialized.", EventLogEntryType.Information, source: "MyService", logName: "MyCompanyLog");

⚙️ Configuration (App.config)

<configuration>
  <appSettings>
    <add key="EventLog.DefaultLogName" value="Application" />
    <add key="EventLog.DefaultSource" value="MyApp" />
    <add key="EventLog.FallbackToLogNameOnError" value="true" />
    <add key="EventLog.LogLevel" value="Information" />
  </appSettings>
</configuration>

🔒 Security Notes

• Creating new sources requires admin privileges.
• In non-elevated environments, EventLogHelper will automatically fall back to an existing source (e.g., the log name or "Application").

📦 Roadmap

• Structured logging support
• Optional fallback to file or ETW

🙌 Contributions

Contributions are welcome! Please file issues or open pull requests to suggest improvements, report bugs, or extend functionality.

📄 License

MIT License. See LICENSE for details.