How to easily log a dictionary of arguments and serialize to JSON using Trace in C#

Question

I need a flexible way to log keyvalue pairs of arguments using System.Diagnostics.Trace.

Basically, when I need to log something in code I would like to make a method call which passes a message and a dictionary of values. Its obviously not hard but I want to make it clean and if possible enforce the key names which are allowed. This is because I want be able to parse the keypair values out later and construct a log viewer which lets you search and sort by the arguments that have been logged.

One way I've experimented with was using the new .Net 4 optional method parameters.

public static void LogInformation(string message, int? someID = null, string someValue = null, int? anotherID = null, int? andAnotherID = null)

I could then call it this like:

Logger.LogInformation("themessage", someID:5, andAnotherID:2);

This method would then check every parameter and IF it had a value THEN it would add it to an internally built dictionary using consistent key names. I would then serialize the dictionary to JSON and pass it to the Trace.LogInformation method as the message. But this seems way too complicated to maintain. I would have to keep adding new lines in this method as our code-base grew and new values needed to be recorded.

I've also tried giving up the idea of locking down on key names and just trying to find a simple way to pass keypair values to a log method without having to do this:

LogInformation("themessage", new Dictionary<string,string>(){{"someID","1"},{"andAnotherID","2"}});

I tried going down the anonymous & dynamic type route so that developer could call the method like this:

LogInformation("themessage", new { someID = 1, andAnotherID = 2 });

But you can't use the standard serialization libraries to turn that anonymous or dynamic object into JSON.

Are there any other options or ideas I should investigate? Performance is obviously something I need to consider as well, since this method will be called from all over.

Does this answer your question? How do I convert a dictionary to a JSON String in C#? — Michael Freidgeim
– Michael Freidgeim, Commented May 27, 2024 at 9:08

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 12:01:15Z

1

You can actually serialize an anonymous object to JSON using the JavaScriptSerializer

JavaScriptSerializer serializer = new JavaScriptSerializer();
var output = serializer.Serialize(your_anon_object);

see this thread:

How do I serialize a C# anonymous type to a JSON string?

And if you want to enforce certain 'keys', is there any reason you don't just want to use a strongly typed class?

edited May 23, 2017 at 12:01

CommunityBot

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answered Jul 16, 2010 at 13:54

Wiebe Tijsma

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2 Comments

Vyrotek Over a year ago

Because the list off possible values to log will keep growing and growing. Also, I didn't want to use JavaScriptSerializer because I thought it was deprecated. Looks like it isn't anymore.

Wiebe Tijsma Over a year ago

OK. However, if you don't have to define the 'keys' runtime, you'll have to define them somewhere compile time, and I don't see the problem with a class with a lot of properties. (some people do though, matter of taste I guess :))

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