Elastic Common Schema Serilog Text Formatter

This ITextFormatter implementation formats a Serilog event into a JSON representation that adheres to the Elastic Common Schema specification.

Packages

The .NET assemblies are published to NuGet under the package name Elastic.CommonSchema.Serilog

How to Enable

var logger = new LoggerConfiguration()
                .WriteTo.Console(new EcsTextFormatter())
                .CreateLogger();

In the code snippet above new EcsTextFormatter() enables the text formatter and instructs Serilog to format the event as JSON. The sample above uses the Console sink, but you are free to use any sink of your choice, perhaps consider using a filesystem sink and Elastic Filebeat for durable and reliable ingestion.

In ASP.NET (core) applications

.UseSerilog((ctx, config) =>
{
  // Ensure HttpContextAccessor is accessible
  var httpAccessor = ctx.Configuration.Get<HttpContextAccessor>();

  config
    .ReadFrom.Configuration(ctx.Configuration)
    .Enrich.WithEcsHttpContext(httpAccessor)
    .WriteTo.Async(a => a.Console(new EcsTextFormatter()));
})

The WithEcsHttpContext ensures logs will be enriched with HttpContext data.

An example of the output is given below:

{
  "@timestamp": "2019-11-22T14:59:02.5903135+11:00",
  "log.level": "Information",
  "message": "Info \"X\" 2.2",
  "ecs.version": "8.6.0",
  "log": { "logger": "Elastic.CommonSchema.Serilog.Tests.MessageTests" },
  "labels": {
    "MessageTemplate": "Info {ValueX} {SomeY}",
    "ValueX": "X",
    "ThreadName": ".NET Long Running Task"
  },
  "agent": {
    "type": "Elastic.CommonSchema.Serilog",
    "version": "1.6.0"
  },
  "event": {
    "created": "2019-11-22T14:59:02.5903135+11:00",
    "severity": 2,
    "timezone": "Romance Standard Time"
  },
  "host": {
    "os": {
      "full": "Microsoft Windows 10.0.19045",
      "platform": "Win32NT",
      "version": "10.0.19045.0"
    },
    "architecture": "X64",
    "hostname": "LOCALHOST",
    "name": "LOCALHOST"
  },
  "process": {
    "name": "dotnet",
    "pid": 1440,
    "thread.id": 15,
    "thread.name": ".NET Long Running Task",
    "title": ""
  },
  "server": { "user": { "name": "MyDomain\\MyUserName" } },
  "service": {
    "name": "Elastic.CommonSchema",
    "type": "dotnet",
    "version": "1.6.0"
  },
  "user": {
    "domain": "MyDomain",
    "name": "MyUserName"
  },
  "metadata": {
    "SomeY": 2.2
  }
}

Configuration

ECS Aware Message Templates

This formatter also allows you to set ECS fields directly from the message template using properties that adhere to the https://messagetemplates.org/ format.

The available ECS message template properties are listed under LogTemplateProperties.* e.g LogTemplateProperties.TraceId

Log.Information("The time is {TraceId}", "my-trace-id");

Will override trace.id on the resulting ECS json document.

Copyright and License

This software is Copyright (c) 2014-2020 by Elasticsearch BV.

This is free software, licensed under: The Apache License Version 2.0.