How to write to an event log by using Visual C#

Requirements

The following list describes the recommended hardware, software, network infrastructure, and service packs that you will need:
  • Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional, Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, or Windows NT 4.0 Server
  • Microsoft Visual Studio C#

Write to an event log

Event logging provides a standard, centralized way for your applications to record important software and hardware events. Windows supplies a standard user interface for viewing the logs, the Event Viewer. By using the common language's run-time EventLog component, you can connect to existing event logs easily, on both local and remote computers, and write entries to these logs. You can also read entries from existing logs and create your own custom event logs. In its simplest form, writing to an event log involves only a few steps to create a sample application. To do this, follow these steps:
  1. Open Visual Studio C#.
  2. Create a new Console application in Visual C#. The Console application creates a public class and an empty Main method for you.
  3. Verify that the project references at least the System.dll file.
  4. Use the using directive on the System and System.Diagnostics namespaces so that you do not have to qualify declarations from these namespaces later in your code. You must use these statements before any other declarations.
    using System;
    using System.Diagnostics;
  5. To write to an event log, you must have several pieces of information: Your
    message, the name of the log you to which you want to write (which will be
    created if it does not already exist), and a string that represents the source
    of the event. You can register a particular source with only a single event log;
    if you want to write messages to more than one log, you must define multiple
    sources.
    string sSource;
    string sLog;
    string sEvent;

    sSource = "dotNET Sample App";
    sLog = "Application";
    sEvent = "Sample Event";
  6. Use two static methods of the EventLog class to check whether your source
    exists, and then, if the source does not exist, to create this source that is
    associated with a particular event log. If the log name that you specify does
    not exist, the name is created automatically when you write your first entry to
    the log. By default, if you do not supply a log name to the
    CreateEventSource method, the log file is named "Application Log."
    if (!EventLog.SourceExists(sSource))
    EventLog.CreateEventSource(sSource,sLog);
    1. To write a message to an event log, you can use the EventLog.WriteEntry static method. This method has several different overloaded versions. The following sample code shows the simplest method, which takes a source string and your message, and one of the more complex methods, which supports specifying the event ID and event type:
      EventLog.WriteEntry(sSource,sEvent);
      EventLog.WriteEntry(sSource, sEvent, EventLogEntryType.Warning, 234);
    2. Save your application. Run your application, and then check the Application log in the Event Viewer to see your new events.
    Complete code listing
  7. using System;
    using System.Diagnostics;

    namespace WriteToAnEventLog_csharp
    {
    /// Summary description for Class1.
    class Class1
    {
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
    string sSource;
    string sLog;
    string sEvent;

    sSource = "dotNET Sample App";
    sLog = "Application";
    sEvent = "Sample Event";

    if (!EventLog.SourceExists(sSource))
    EventLog.CreateEventSource(sSource,sLog);

    EventLog.WriteEntry(sSource,sEvent);
    EventLog.WriteEntry(sSource, sEvent,
    EventLogEntryType.Warning, 234);
    }
    }
    }



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