Using Ninject to fill Log4Net Dependency

Question

I use Ninject as a DI Container in my application. In order to loosely couple to my logging library, I use an interface like this:

public interface ILogger
    {
        void Debug(string message);
        void Debug(string message, Exception exception);
        void Debug(Exception exception);

        void Info(string message);
        ...you get the idea

And my implementation looks like this

public class Log4NetLogger : ILogger
    {
        private ILog _log;

        public Log4NetLogger(ILog log)
        {
            _log = log;
        }

        public void Debug(string message)
        {
            _log.Debug(message);
        }
        ... etc etc

A sample class with a logging dependency

public partial class HomeController
    {
        private ILogger _logger;

        public HomeController(ILogger logger)
        {
            _logger = logger;
        }

When instantiating an instance of Log4Net, you should give it the name of the class for which it will be logging. This is proving to be a challenge with Ninject.

The goal is that when instantiating HomeController, Ninject should instantiate ILog with a "name" of "HomeController"

Here is what I have for config

public class LoggingModule : NinjectModule
    {
        public override void Load()
        {
            Bind<ILog>().ToMethod(x => LogManager.GetLogger(GetParentTypeName(x)))
                .InSingletonScope();

            Bind<ILogger>().To<Log4NetLogger>()
                .InSingletonScope();
        }

        private string GetParentTypeName(IContext context)
        {
            return context.Request.ParentContext.Request.ParentContext.Request.Service.FullName;
        }
    }

However the "Name" that is being passed to ILog is not what I'm expecting. I can't figure out any rhyme or reason either, sometimes it's right, most of the time it's not. The Names that I'm seeing are names of OTHER classes which also have dependencies on the ILogger.

Answer 1

I personally have no interest in abstracting away my logger, so my implementation modules reference log4net.dll directly and my constructors request an ILog as desired.

To achieve this, a one line registration using Ninject v3 looks like this at the end of my static void RegisterServices( IKernel kernel ):

        kernel.Bind<ILog>().ToMethod( context=> 
            LogManager.GetLogger( context.Request.Target.Member.ReflectedType ) );
        kernel.Get<LogCanary>();
    }

    class LogCanary
    {
        public LogCanary(ILog log)
        {
            log.Debug( "Debug Logging Canary message" );
            log.Info( "Logging Canary message" );
        }
    }

For ease of diagnosing logging issues, I stick the following at the start to get a non-DI driven message too:

public static class NinjectWebCommon
{
    public static void Start()
    {
        LogManager.GetLogger( typeof( NinjectWebCommon ) ).Info( "Start" );

Which yields the following on starting of the app:

<datetime> INFO  MeApp.App_Start.NinjectWebCommon           - Start
<datetime> DEBUG MeApp.App_Start.NinjectWebCommon+LogCanary - Debug Logging Canary message
<datetime> INFO  MeApp.App_Start.NinjectWebCommon+LogCanary - Logging Canary message