Log settings¶

Vonk uses Serilog for logging. The logging settings are controlled in json configuration files called logsettings(.*).json. The files are read in a hierarchy, exactly like the appsettings files are. Vonk comes with default settings in logsettings.default.json. You can adjust the way Vonk logs its information by overriding these default settings in logsettings.json or logsettings.instance.json. You need to create this file yourself.

Alternatively you can control Log settings with Environment Variables.

Vonk by default does nog log any Patient Health Information data, regardless of the level of the log. The only PHI part that can be included in the log is the User Name, when running with Smart authorization (so the user is identified) and including this part in the outputTemplate (see below).

Changing the log event level¶

Serilog defines several levels of log events. From low to high, these are Verbose, Debug, Information, Warning, Error and Fatal. You can set the minimum level you want to log, meaning that events for that level or higher will be logged. By default, Vonk uses Error as the minimum level of recording information.

To change the level of logging, follow these steps:

Find this setting:

"MinimumLevel": {
        "Default": "Error",
},

Change the setting for Default from Error to the level you need, from the choice of Verbose, Debug, Information, Warning, Error and Fatal.

You can deviate from the default mimimum level for specific namespaces. You do this by specifying the namespace and the log event level you would like for this namespace, for example:

"MinimumLevel": {
        "Default": "Error",
        "Override": {
                "Vonk": "Warning"
        }
},

Some additional namespaces you might want to log are:

Vonk.Configuration to log configuration information on startup
Vonk.Core.Licensing to show license information in your logs
Vonk.Repository.EntityFrameworkCore, Vonk.Repository.DocumentDb or Vonk.Repository.Memory to log repository events
Vonk.Core.Repository.EntryIndexerContext, set it to "Error" if you have excessive warnings about indexing (mostly when importing Synthea <https://synthea.mitre.org/downloads> data)
Microsoft to log events from the Microsoft libraries
Microsoft.AspNetCore.Diagnostics to report request handling times
System to log events from the System libraries

Please note that the namespaces are evaluated in order from top to bottom, so more generic ‘catch all’ namespaces should be at the bottom of the list. So this will log events on Vonk.Repository.Sql on Information level:

"MinimumLevel": {
        "Default": "Error",
        "Override": {
                "Vonk.Repository.Sql": "Information",
                "Vonk": "Warning"
        }
},

But in this (purposefully incorrect) example the Warning level on the Vonk namespace will override the Information level on the Vonk.Repository.Sql namespace:

"MinimumLevel": {
        "Default": "Error",
        "Override": {
                "Vonk": "Warning",
                "Vonk.Repository.Sql": "Information"
        }
},

Changing the sink¶

Another setting you can adjust is WriteTo. This tells Serilog which sink(s) to log to. Serilog provides several sinks, and for Vonk you can use Console, File, ApplicationInsights and Seq. All of which can be wrapped in an Async sink to avoid blocking Vonk when waiting for the sink to process the log statements.

Console¶

The Console sink will write to your shell.

Find the WriteTo setting:

"WriteTo": [
        {
                "Name": "Async",
                "Args": {
                        "configure": [
                                {
                                "Name": "Console",
                                "Args": {
                                        "restrictedToMinimumLevel": "Information",
                                        "outputTemplate": "{Timestamp:yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.fff zzz} {UserId} {Username} [{Level}] [ReqId: {RequestId}] {Message}{NewLine}{Exception}"
                                }
                                }
                        ]
                }
        },
        {
                //Settings for other sinks
        }

The Console is notoriously slow at processing log statements, so it is recommended to limit the number of statements for this sink. Use the restrictedToMinimumLevel to do so. Also, if you are on Windows, the Powershell command window appears to be faster than the traditional Command Line window.

Settings for the Console sink:

outputTemplate: What information will be in each log line. Besides regular text you can use placeholders for information from the log statement:

{Timestamp:yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.fff zzz}: When this was logged, with formatting

{UserId}: Technical id of the logged in user - if applicable

{Username}: Name of the logged in user - if applicable

{Application}: Name of the application (in case other applications are logging to the same sink). Is set to Vonk at the bottom of the logsettings file

{Level}: Level of the log, see the values in Changing the log event level

{MachineName}: Name of the machine hosting the Vonk instance. Expecially useful when running multiple instances all logging to the same file.

{RequestId}: Unique id of the web request, useful to correlate log statements

{Message}}: Actual message being logged

{Exception}: If an error is logged, Vonk may include the original exception. That is then formatted here.

{SourceContext}: The class from which the log statement originated (this is usually not needed by end users).

{NewLine}: Well, ehh, continue on the next line

restrictedToMinimumLevel: Only log messages from this level up are sent to this sink.

File¶

The File sink will write to a file, possibly rolling it by interval or size.

Find the WriteTo setting:

"WriteTo": [
        {
        {
                //Settings for Console
        }
        },
        {
        "Name": "Async",
        "Args": {
                "configure": [
                        {
                        "Name": "File",
                        "Args": {
                                "path": "%temp%/vonk.log",
                                "rollingInterval": "Day",
                                "fileSizeLimitBytes": "",
                                "retainedFileCountLimit": "7",
                                "outputTemplate": "{Timestamp:yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.fff zzz} {UserId} {Username} [{Application}] [{Level}] [Machine: {MachineName}] [ReqId: {RequestId}] {Message}{NewLine}{Exception}",
                                "restrictedToMinimumLevel": "Verbose"
                        }
                        }
                ]
        }
        },
        {
                //Settings for Azure ApplicationInsights
        }

Under File, change the location of the logfiles by editing the value for path. For example:
```
{
        "Name": "RollingFile",
        "Args": {
                "path": "c:/logfiles/vonk.log"
        }
},
```
Other values that you can set for the File log are:
- rollingInterval: When this interval expires, the log system will start a new file. The start datetime of each interval is added to the filename. Valid values are Infinite, Year, Month, Day, Hour, Minute.
- fileSizeLimitBytes: Limit the size of the log file, which is 1GB by default. When it is full, the log system will start a new file.
- retainedFileCountLimit: If more than this number of log files is written, the oldest will be deleted. Default value is 31. Explicitly setting it to an empty value means files are never deleted.
- outputTemplate: as described for Console.
- restrictedToMinimumLevel: as described for Console.

Application Insights¶

Vonk can also log to Azure Application Insights (“Application Insights Telemetry”). What you need to do:

Create an Application Insights instance on Azure.
Get the InstrumentationKey from the Properties blade of this instance.

Add the correct sink to the logsettings.json:

"WriteTo": [
        {
                "Name": "ApplicationInsightsTraces",
                "Args": {
                        "instrumentationKey": "<the key you copied in step 2>",
                        "restrictedToMinimumLevel": "Verbose" //Or a higher level
                }
        },
],

This also enables Dependency Tracking for access to your database. This works for both SQL Server and MongoDB. And for the log sent to Seq if you enabled that.
If you set the level for Application Insights to Verbose, and combine that with Database details, you get all the database commands right into Application Insights.

Seq¶

Seq is a web interface to easily inspect structured logs.

For the Seq sink, you can also specify arguments. One of them is the server URL for your Seq server:

"WriteTo": [
        {
                "Name": "Seq",
                "Args": { "serverUrl": "http://localhost:5341" }
        }

Change serverUrl to the URL of your Seq server
restrictedToMinimumLevel: as described for Console.

Database details¶

Whether you use MongoDB or SQL Server, you can have Vonk log in detail what happens towards your database. Just set the appropriate loglevel to ‘Verbose’:

"MinimumLevel": {
        "Default": "Error",
        "Override": {
                "Vonk.Repository.EntityFrameworkCore": "Verbose",
                "Vonk.Repository.DocumentDb": "Verbose",
                "Vonk": "Warning"
        }
},

If you do so you probably don’t want all this detail in your console sink, so you can limit the level for that, see Console above.