Multi-tenant logging in ASP.NET MVC application - asp.net

Question

I have a multi-tenant application in ASP.NET MVC 5 that can accept client logins from multiple companies. Currently, I'm using log4net to log to files, but it places all the logs from all the companies in one file. Ideally, I would like to separate out the log files so that the logs for each company resides in its own folder.
I see from this question that I can programmatically create additional appenders, which then can log to different log files. But that would mean that for each instance of a class, I would have to keep calling
ILog log = LogManager.GetLogger("CompanyA");
to get the correct logger, right? Is there a better way to do so? I'm also open to using another logger if need be.
Thanks.

Answer 1

Do you use an Ioc container in your application? I was able to solve a similar problem using AutoFac MultitenantContainer. Steps that you need to follow
define the strategy you would use to identify each tenant.
Register a generic logger interface with Autofac container
For each tenant register specific logger.
your code could look like (extract from Autofac wiki)
var tenantIdStrategy = new RequestParameterTenantIdentificationStrategy("tenant");
var builder = new ContainerBuilder();
builder.RegisterType<BaseDependency>().As<IDependency>();
// If you have tenant-specific controllers in the same assembly as the
// application, you should register controllers individually.
builder.RegisterType<HomeController>();
// Create the multitenant container and the tenant overrides.
var mtc = new MultitenantContainer(tenantIdStrategy, builder.Build());
mtc.ConfigureTenant("CompanyA",
b =>
{
b.RegisterType<Tenant1Dependency>().As<IDependency>().InstancePerDependency();
b.RegisterType<Tenant1Controller>().As<HomeController>();
});
If this is the only instance where you need to differentiate the tenants and do not want to Ioc at this point you could create the factory like
static class LogFactory
{
public static ILog GetLogger()
{
var requestUri = HttpContext.Current.Request.Url.AbsoluteUri;
switch (requestUri)
{
case "companyA.domain.com":
return LogManager.GetLogger("CompanyA");
case "companyB.domain.com":
return LogManager.GetLogger("CompanyB");
default:
return LogManager.GetLogger("default");
}
}
}
now use the factory instead of directly using Logmanager
ILog logger = LogFactory.GetLogger();