E-mail notification when errors occur

[NC Software]

It would have really helped me, the System Admin (whatever the role is called) to get an e-mail notification of error log entries. If I had been getting notified by e-mail, SMS, whatever, that an error occurred, I would have been on top of the e-mail template system as it generated errors when trying to parse the nVelocity stuff that got pooched by the FCK'ing editor. I suggest add an option to e-mail the admin (or enter an address for error notifications). I just now noticed there were errors in the error log and they indicated the e-mail templates were pooched but I wasn't aware of the errors.

[mazhar]

Read following thread
viewtopic.php?f=42&t=11796

[AbleMods]

That NEEDS to go into 7.0.5

[calvis]

Thanks Mazhar,

I have added that to my code snippet library.

[jmestep]

Yes, that is great. I've had code in a global.asax file and code that runs with Elmah.dll stuff, but neither of them works well consistently.

[Logan Rhodehamel]

Another way to approach this would be to alter the log4net.config file. I should construct a tutorial on that.

[Logan Rhodehamel]

As I mentioned in my previous post, we use log4net as our logging facility. This is a fairly common logging system that is used by a wide variety of applications. It is also highly configurable.

All of the settings for log4net reside in App_Data\log4net.config. NOTE: Any change to log4net.config will require a manual restart of the application to take effect. The quick hack way of doing this is to open the web.config in the root of your website, go to the end of the file, press enter, and save. The file change will trigger an automatic restart of the app and reload the log4net.config file.

The log4net library supports a huge range of "appenders"... It is the appender that decides whether to log your error to file, to database, to the console, to the windows event log, to email, etc. You can configure multiple appenders.

One benefit to doing this for the email vs a global.asax change is that you can also get context information... log4net will send you X number of messages prior to the exception. It may or may not be helpful. I am going to post a sample log4net.config file that has been modified to send email:

Code: Select all

<log4net>
  <appender name="RollingLogFileAppender" type="log4net.Appender.RollingFileAppender">
    <file value="App_Data\\Logs\\app.log" />
    <appendToFile value="true" />
    <rollingStyle value="Size" />
    <maxSizeRollBackups value="10" />
    <maximumFileSize value="10MB" />
    <staticLogFileName value="true" />
    <layout type="log4net.Layout.PatternLayout">
      <conversionPattern value="%-5p %d %5rms %-22.22c{1} %-18.18M - %m%n" />
    </layout>
  </appender>
  <appender name="SmtpAppender" type="log4net.Appender.SmtpAppender">
    <to value="to@domain" />
    <from value="from@domain" />
    <subject value="Subject of error message" />
    <smtpHost value="smtp.server.address" />
    <bufferSize value="10" />
    <lossy value="true" />
    <evaluator type="log4net.Core.LevelEvaluator">
        <threshold value="WARN"/>
    </evaluator>
    <layout type="log4net.Layout.PatternLayout">
        <conversionPattern value="%newline%date [%thread] %-5level %logger [%property{NDC}] - %message%newline%newline%newline" />
    </layout>
  </appender>
  <root>
    <level value="All" />
    <appender-ref ref="RollingLogFileAppender" />
    <appender-ref ref="SmtpAppender" />
  </root>
</log4net>

In the SmtpAppender definition, buffer size indicates how many of the prior log messages will be included. Threshold indicates what level will register the email. I have it set to WARN. You could also set it to ERROR to only see more critical problems.

[Logan Rhodehamel]

I have moved this thread to the main forum as others may be interested to see how to make this configuration change.