Quick and easy Console Logging - Trace

This post is outdated and only exists for historical reasons

Just a quick Blog

I was wanting to get the output of my Console Write to a log file but still show to the Console!! So off to google I went and I found this amazing solution via StackOverflow!

I thought that I would pass on the love with a slightly modified (cleaned up and simplified the output location)

/// <summary>
/// Initiates a Tracer which will print to both
/// the Console and to a log file, log.txt
/// </summary>
private static void InitiateTracer()
{
  Trace.Listeners.Clear();
  var dir = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory;
  var twtl = new TextWriterTraceListener("log.txt")
  {
    Name = "TextLogger",
    TraceOutputOptions = TraceOptions.ThreadId | TraceOptions.DateTime
  };
  var ctl = new ConsoleTraceListener(false) { TraceOutputOptions = TraceOptions.DateTime };
  Trace.Listeners.Add(twtl);
  Trace.Listeners.Add(ctl);
  Trace.AutoFlush = true;
}

The next step is to use replace (ctrl+h) on "Console.Write(" with "Trace.Write(" and "Console.WriteLine(" with "Trace.WriteLine('. After this it probably will not build, that will be because you need to add "using System.Diagnostics;`" to the top of the pages where you replace Console with Trace. The next error you might get is a bit less likely. If you have been using Console.WriteLine's build in String.Format you will have to add String.Format yourself as Trace doesn't do it automagically :(

Then simply call InitiateTracer() from within your Console Applications main and voilà you have your normal console output + output to a log.txt file in the same path as your executable so you can check over your logs at a later time!

Hope this helps :)