The Wanderer: Write to Azure Blob Storage with Serilog in .NET Core

Similar to the previous post https://jaryl-lan.blogspot.com/2022/03/write-to-elasticsearch-with-serilog-in.html. Will be using Serilog library to write to Azure Blob Storage. Before we can start, you are required to have a Azure Storage Account up and running. Do not worry if you do not have an Azure account as you can actually run the emulator on your local machine. If you have Visual Studio 2022 installed on your machine, then Azurite (To replace Azure Storage Emulator) is included. Otherwise you will have to manually install it.

For those who has Visual Studio 2022. It is located at the following directory

Enterprise:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Enterprise\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\Azure Storage Emulator

Professional:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Professional\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\Azure Storage Emulator

For those does not have Visual Studio 2022 installed. 1 alternative is to run it with docker. You may be wondering on the ports defined. Port 10000 is for blob service, 10001 is for queue service and lastly 10002 is for table service.

Pull the azurite image:
docker pull mcr.microsoft.com/azure-storage/azurite

Run the azurite:
docker run --rm -p 10000:10000 -p 10001:10001 -p 10002:10002 mcr.microsoft.com/azure-storage/azurite

Other than the Azurite, you are required to install Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer to browse the logs written into the blob storage.

Back to the code, make sure the following 2 NuGet packages is included.

Serilog.AspNetCore

Serilog.Sinks.AzureBlobStorage

You may use 1 of the following methods to be implemented into your Program.cs file.

Method 1: Configure Serilog in code.

[.NET 6] - Minimal hosting model

builder.Host.UseSerilog((hostBuilderContext, loggerConfiguration) =>
    loggerConfiguration
        .WriteTo.Console()
        .WriteTo.AzureBlobStorage(
            "DefaultEndpointsProtocol=http;AccountName=devstoreaccount1;AccountKey=Eby8vdM02xNOcqFlqUwJPLlmEtlCDXJ1OUzFT50uSRZ6IFsuFq2UVErCz4I6tq/K1SZFPTOtr/KBHBeksoGMGw==;BlobEndpoint=http://127.0.0.1:10000/devstoreaccount1;",
            Serilog.Events.LogEventLevel.Information,
            storageContainerName: "writetoazureblobstoragewithserilog",
            storageFileName: "WriteToAzureBlobStorageWithSerilog-{yyyy}-{MM}-{dd}.txt"));
SelfLog.Enable(Console.Error);

[.NET 5 and earlier]

Host.CreateDefaultBuilder(args)
    .UseSerilog((hostBuilderContext, loggerConfiguration) => {
        loggerConfiguration
        .WriteTo.Console()
        .WriteTo.AzureBlobStorage(
            "DefaultEndpointsProtocol=http;AccountName=devstoreaccount1;AccountKey=Eby8vdM02xNOcqFlqUwJPLlmEtlCDXJ1OUzFT50uSRZ6IFsuFq2UVErCz4I6tq/K1SZFPTOtr/KBHBeksoGMGw==;BlobEndpoint=http://127.0.0.1:10000/devstoreaccount1;",
            Serilog.Events.LogEventLevel.Information,
            storageContainerName: "writetoazureblobstoragewithserilog",
            storageFileName: "WriteToAzureBlobStorageWithSerilog-{yyyy}-{MM}-{dd}.txt");
        SelfLog.Enable(Console.Error);
    })
    .ConfigureWebHostDefaults(webBuilder =>
    {
        webBuilder.UseStartup<Startup>();
    });

Method 2: Configure Serilog from appSettings file.

[appSettings.json]

"Serilog": {
"WriteTo": [
    {
      "Name": "Console"
    },
    {
      "Name": "AzureBlobStorage",
      "Args": {
        "ConnectionString": "DefaultEndpointsProtocol=http;AccountName=devstoreaccount1;AccountKey=Eby8vdM02xNOcqFlqUwJPLlmEtlCDXJ1OUzFT50uSRZ6IFsuFq2UVErCz4I6tq/K1SZFPTOtr/KBHBeksoGMGw==;BlobEndpoint=http://127.0.0.1:10000/devstoreaccount1;",
        "storageContainerName": "writetoazureblobstoragewithserilog",
        "storageFileName": "WriteToAzureBlobStorageWithSerilog-{yyyy}-{MM}-{dd}.txt"
      }
    }
]
}

[.NET 6] - Minimal hosting model

builder.Host.UseSerilog((hostBuilderContext, loggerConfiguration) =>
loggerConfiguration
.ReadFrom.Configuration(hostBuilderContext.Configuration));

SelfLog.Enable(Console.Error);

[.NET 5 and earlier]

Host.CreateDefaultBuilder(args)
    .UseSerilog((hostBuilderContext, loggerConfiguration) =>
    {
        loggerConfiguration
            .ReadFrom.Configuration(hostBuilderContext.Configuration);
        SelfLog.Enable(Console.Error);
    })