Getting started with Logging

I’m having some difficulty getting started with nuget Google.Logging.V2. Sadly, this is still empty: https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/google-cloud-dotnet#google-cloud-logging

I was able to get our Go app working with Google Logging last week using my fork of a Logrus hook. Now, I want to get the .NET client working since we have many more F# projects. Many of them are using NLog http://nlog-project.org/. I would be great to have an NLog Target for Google Logging.

I just got this to actually write log messages:

module glog

open System.Collections.Generic

// https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/google-cloud-dotnet/blob/master/apis/Google.Logging.V2/Google.Logging.Log4Net/Extensions.cs
let epochZero = System.DateTime(1970, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, System.DateTimeKind.Utc)

let toTimestamp(dt: System.DateTime) =
    let sinceEpoch = dt - epochZero
    Google.Protobuf.WellKnownTypes.Timestamp(
        Seconds = sinceEpoch.Ticks / System.TimeSpan.TicksPerSecond,
        Nanos = (int)((sinceEpoch.Ticks % System.TimeSpan.TicksPerSecond) * (1000000000L / System.TimeSpan.TicksPerSecond))
    )

[<EntryPoint>]
let main argv =
    // https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/google-cloud-dotnet#google-cloud-logging
    // https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/google-cloud-dotnet/blob/master/apis/Google.Logging.V2/Google.Logging.Log4Net/GoogleStackdriverAppender.cs

    let client = Google.Logging.V2.LoggingServiceV2Client.Create()
    let rs = Google.Api.MonitoredResource(Type="global")

    let logName = Google.Logging.V2.LoggingServiceV2Client.FormatLogName("tachyusatmion", "fsharp-test")

    let le = Google.Logging.V2.LogEntry()
    le.TextPayload <- "2016-10-20 payload"
    le.InsertId <- sprintf "%s:%d" (System.Guid.NewGuid().ToString()) 1
    le.Severity <- Google.Logging.Type.LogSeverity.Debug
    le.Timestamp <- toTimestamp(System.DateTime.UtcNow)

    // let cs = Google.Api.Gax.CallSettings()

    let rsp = client.WriteLogEntries(logName, rs, Dictionary(), [le])

    printfn "%A" rsp
    0

Is it possible to see the http communication? I’m on my Mac. In Go, I’m able to os.Setenv("HTTPS_PROXY", "http://127.0.0.1:8080") and then start mitmproxy to see the communication.

Can I do something like that for this project? Is there a way to make the communication go through a proxy?

[jskeet]

I agree it’s all a bit confusing, and that’s partly because it’s not “done” yet, and we have some documentation work still to do (both here on Github and on Google-owned sites).

They’re both autogenerated, at the moment - the Google.Logging.V2 library doesn’t have any wrapper code yet, although it might in the future.

In terms of pros and cons, referring to Google.Apis.Logging.v2 as the REST API and Google.Logging.V2 as the gRPC API:

• The REST API is generated with stable codegen - it won’t change until the next major version, whereas the gRPC API is still in flux. We believe it works, so it’s functionally stable, but the API surface is still likely to change a bit before GA.
• The gRPC codegen is designed to take more advantage of known semantics in the underlying API, and we’ve spent a lot of time trying to make it as usable as possible.
• gRPC is more efficient than the REST API in terms of:
  • A binary format (protobuf) instead of JSON, for more efficient network transmission and parsing
  • Multiplexing over a single channel
  • More capabilities such as streaming, which isn’t used by logging but is used by other APIs such as Speech

In terms of gRPC debugging, you need two steps at the moment:

• Set two environment variables, GRPC_TRACE=all and GRPC_VERBOSITY=debug
• Call GrpcEnvironment.SetLogger in your code, e.g. GrpcEnvironment.SetLogger(new ConsoleLogger()) with suitable using directives

That will generate a lot of output - you can tinker with the environment variable values to limit the output.

[ctaggart]

fyi, I made a post about getting started with much of the above code in F# here: http://blog.ctaggart.com/2016/11/google-logging-from-log4net.html https://twitter.com/cmr0n/status/803290458474483712