Securely log to blob storage using NLog with connection string in key vault.
If you do a simple google search on how to log to blob storage using NLog, you can find examples from the project page as well as posts from other developers. However, in most of the examples I have found, the connection string for the blob storage are directly embedded in the nlog.config file, which is not ideal. In this post, I show you another example of using NLog to log to azure blob storage, with the connection string coming from an azure key vault.
About NLog
In case you are new to NLog, it’s one of the most popular logging libraries as of this writing. It’s relatively straightforward to get started with NLog in your .NET core application. Literally, all I had to do to get started with logging to a file is importing a few nuget packages, add a nlog.config file and a few lines of codes in Program.cs. You can find simple tutorial to get started here.
NLog is a flexible and free logging platform for various .NET platforms, including .NET standard. NLog makes it easy to write to several targets. (database, file, console) and change the logging configuration on-the-fly
With NLog, you can write an extension to log to any target you desire. In addition, several extensions to log to popular targets are available, one of which is the AzureStorage extension for logging to an azure storage including blob, queue, and table storage.
NLog gdc layout renderer
Gdc stands for Global Diagnostics Context. It’s just a dictionary object to hold variables so you can use them in the nlog.config file.
Use the Global Diagnostics Context when you want to make certain information available to every logger in the current process.
Azure Key Vault
In case you are not familiar with azure key vault, it has all the awesome security features built in to protect your secrets. You can store passwords, connection strings, certificates etc … in the vault, and stop worrying about leaking those secrets in the source codes (for the most part).
I have written a few posts on how to setup and integrate azure key vault with an asp.net core application. Checkout some of my posts below to learn more on setting up and integrating with azure key vault.
