I mentioned a couple days ago that my current project is based on a C# and ASP.NET. I don’t have access to Visual Studio (should I try to get it? is it worth it?) so I’ve been using the Improv C# plugin with Eclipse. The combination works alright, but there are a couple things that need improvement. First, when compiling an assembly in C#, you have to specify each module that it references per class, there isn’t a way to to say that MyProject.dll should be included in the classpath for the entire C# project. Second, there’s no way to say that you want all the compiled assemblies to be placed in ../classes/ instead of ../build (ie: you can’t specify an output folder). But that’s where NAnt comes to the rescue. I downloaded NAnt today and was able to get a build script running within a couple minutes that accomplishes the two things I needed above.

I do have a question for those of you who have done .NET programming before. In Java, you compile .java files to .class files. Using C#, you compile a .cs file to a .dll (or .exe, etc..) which is called an assembly. Then in Java you’d usually package up your class files into a jar file. After using NAnt today, I see that you can compile a bunch of .cs files into a single dll, also called an assembly, which you can then use just like a jar file. Do I have that right? Are there different ways of doing this?

I wrote up a very simple C# class that provides logging for C# applications since the C# Logger on sourceforge is still in alpha (and doesn’t appear to be active) and the .NET framework doesn’t seem to provide normal text file logging outside of the EventLog (correct me if I’m wrong):

using System;
using System.IO;
namespace com.ignitionlabs.logging {  
  public class Logger {
    private static int _ALL = 100;
    private static int _INFO = 75;
    private static int _ERROR = 50;
    private static int _OFF = 0;
    private static String logDirectory = System.Configuration.ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["logging.directory"].ToString();
    public static int ALL {
      get { return _ALL; }
    }
    public static int ERROR {
      get { return _ERROR; }
    }
    public static int INFO {
      get { return _INFO; }
    }
    public static int OFF {
      get { return _OFF; }
    }
    public static void append(String message, int level) {
      int logLevel = _OFF;
      String strLogLevel = System.Configuration.ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["logging.level"].ToString();
      switch(strLogLevel) {
        case "ALL":
          logLevel = _ALL;
          break;
        case "ERROR":
          logLevel = _ERROR;
          break;
        case "INFO":
          logLevel = _INFO;
          break;
        default:
          logLevel = _OFF;
          break;
      }
      if (logLevel >= level) {
        DateTime dt = DateTime.Now;
        String filePath = logDirectory + dt.ToString("yyyyMMdd") + ".log";
        if (!File.Exists(filePath)) {
          FileStream fs = File.Create(filePath);
          fs.Close();
        }
        try {
          StreamWriter sw = File.AppendText(filePath);
          sw.WriteLine(dt.ToString("hh:mm:ss") + "|" + message);
          sw.Flush();
          sw.Close();
        } catch (Exception e) {
          Console.WriteLine(e.Message.ToString());
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

After compiling, you’ll need to add 2 elements to your <appsettings> in web.config:

<add key=”logDirectory” value=”c:\myapp\logs\” />
<add key=”logLevel” value=”ALL|INFO|ERROR|OFF” />

and then you can use the class like this:

Logger.append(“your application message…”, Logger.ALL);

As always, I’m interested in any design flaws or critiques.