A TraceListener that sends messages via UDP

Introduction

Generating application log messages is important for diagnosing and testing a system, and a must for complex and large systems. .NET framework currently provides EventLogTraceListener and TextWriterTraceListener, which work fine for desktop applications; but for more complex server applications which need to be monitored/tested remotely, there is no solution.

Hence, I wrote this small utility NetTraceListener class that extends from TraceListener and outputs log messages to a defined UDP port.

Requirement

You would require a basic UDP notes collector to see the UDP messages.

Code

The entire source file is written in less than 20 lines of code.

The constructor takes a host name (e.g., "127.0.0.1") and a port number, it creates a UDPClient object that is used to send UDP messages.

UdpClient notifier; 
IPEndPoint groupEP; 
public TraceNetListener( string host, int port ) 
{
 groupEP = new IPEndPoint( IPAddress.Parse( host ) ,port );
 notifier = new UdpClient(); 
}

The overridden method Close():

public override void Close() 
{ 
    notifier.Close(); 
    base.Close ();
}

The overridden method Write(), it converts the supplied message into bytes, and sends them over a UDP channel.

public override void Write(string message) 
{
 try 
 {
  byte[] bytes = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(message);
  notifier.Send(bytes, bytes.Length, groupEP);
 } 
 catch (Exception e) 
 {} 
}

Now in your main application, you need to add this class as a trace listener.

Trace.Listeners.Add( new TraceNetListener("127.0.0.1", 11000 )); 
Trace.Write("HELLO WORLD !");

And you are all set. When you execute this code, your UDP NoteCollector will get all your trace messages.