EventLogHelper 2025.8.17.2

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 fallbacks)
• ✅ Works in non-elevated environments
• ✅ Configurable defaults via App.config, Web.config, or appsettings.json (automatically loaded at first use)
• ✅ Gracefully handles permission issues and registry conflicts
• ✅ Configurable logging severity (filter logs by importance)

💡 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.

🧾 Example Usage

Basic logging with default source and log name:

SmartEventLogger.Log("Application started.")
SmartEventLogger.Log("A warning occurred.", EventLogEntryType.Warning)
SmartEventLogger.Log("An error occurred.", EventLogEntryType.Error)

Custom source and log name:

SmartEventLogger.MachineName = "."
SmartEventLogger.LogName = "MyCompanyLog"
SmartEventLogger.SourceName = "MyServiceSource"

SmartEventLogger.Log("Service initialized.",
                     EventLogEntryType.Information)

Or with a fluent interface using GetLog:

SmartEventLogger.GetLog("MyCompanyLog", "MyServiceSource").
    LogEntry("Service initialized.", EventLogEntryType.Information)

Advanced usage with full customization:

SmartEventLogger.Log(
    _machineName: ".",
    _logName: "CustomLog",
    sourceName: "CustomSource",
    message: "This is a custom log entry.",
    eventType: EventLogEntryType.Information,
    eventID: 1001,
    category: 0,
    rawData: Nothing,
    maxKilobytes: 1024 * 1024,    ' 1 GB
    retentionDays: 7,
    writeInitEntry: True,
    EntrySeverity: LoggingSeverity.Info)

You can also configure default values and plug in a custom writer for unit testing or specialized behavior.

⚙️ Configuration via App Settings

SmartEventLogger can initialize itself automatically using application configuration files:

• .NET Framework – settings are read from <appSettings> in App.config or Web.config.
• .NET Core / .NET 5+ – settings are read from appsettings.json.

If you don’t call InitializeConfiguration() explicitly, these settings will be loaded automatically the first time you use the logger.

🔒 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").

📄 License

MIT License. See LICENSE for details.