inversion of control - Using structuremap with log4net wrapper

Question

I have the following interface:

public interface ILogger
{
    void Debug(string message, params object[] values);
    void Info(string message, params object[] values);
    void Warn(string message, params object[] values);
    void Error(string message, params object[] values);
    void Fatal(string message, params object[] values);
}

and the following implementation:

public class Log4netLogger : ILogger
{
    private ILog _log;

    public Log4netLogger(Type type)
    {
        _log = LogManager.GetLogger(type);
    }

    public void Debug(string message, params object[] values)
    {
        _log.DebugFormat(message, values);
    }

    // other logging methods here...

}

My idea was to use structuremap to instantiate the Log4netLogger class with using the Type of the class that did the logging. However, I can't for the life of me figure out how to pass the type of the calling class to structuremap so that it can be passed to the constructor of the logging implementation. Any advice on how to do that (or a better way) would be most appreciated.

Answer 1

We use a similar ILogger wrapper around log4net and typically use constructor injection. We use an interceptor as a factory method responsible for creating the Logger. Here is our typical registry for logging setup.

public class CommonsRegistry : Registry
{
    public CommonsRegistry()
    {
        For<ILogger>()
            .AlwaysUnique()
            .TheDefault.Is.ConstructedBy(s =>
            {
                if (s.ParentType == null)
                    return new Log4NetLogger(s.BuildStack.Current.ConcreteType);

                return new Log4NetLogger(s.ParentType);
            });

        var applicationPath = Path.GetDirectoryName(Assembly.GetAssembly(GetType()).Location);
        var configFile = new FileInfo(Path.Combine(applicationPath, "log4net.config"));
        XmlConfigurator.ConfigureAndWatch(configFile);
    }
}

The parent type null check is necessary when there are dependencies on concrete types.

The rest is optional log4net setup stuff.

One thing I do like about this setup is the ability to use a null loggers for unit testing.