Feature suggestion - Provide ability for custom columns to use different Serilog properties

[rocknet]

It would be helpful to have the ability to use a Serilog property name other than the ColumnName of the custom column. This is especially true with applications that already had a logging implementation (e.g. log4net) logging to SQL Server. Given the available enrichers, sometimes the property name in Serilog varies from your custom column and for various reasons changing the column is sub-optimal.

Also in the case where different processes are logging to the same table, you might have two different property names that you want to log to the same column. For example, in a web application you could use the UserName from HttpContext, but in a traditional application, EnvironmentUserName might make more sense.

Suggest allowing configuring SqlColumn with a new PropertyName attribute. If provided, that property value will be used for filling the DataTable, otherwise the property with the same name as ColumnName is used.

FWIW, I have this implementation done in a fork, let me know if a PR is welcome.

[dahlsailrunner]

I like this suggestion and would also find it useful. Question - does it support a PropertyName that is within a "stuctured property"? i.e. I have a complex object being logged. The Property is called "HttpContext" (just a name not the actual type) and it has three properties inside it: Name, Id, and Claims. Name and Id are strings and Claims is a List. I'd like to use something like "HttpContext.Id" and "HttpContext.Name" to add columns for UserId and UserName, respectively. Would that work in the fork you've created?

Here's the JSON created by using the "LogEvent" property with current (pre-release) 5.1.3 package:
,"Properties":{"HttpContext":{"Name":null,"Id":"88421113","Claims":{"iss":["https://demo.identityserver.io"],"aud":["https://demo.identityserver.io/resources","api"],"client_id":["server.hybrid"],"idp":["local"],"scope":["openid","profile","email","api","offline_access"]}},"ActionId":"9f0aa60e-e50c-4a32-b7d7-8d5d2a46725f","ActionName":"SimpleApi.Controllers.ValuesController.Get (SimpleApi)","RequestId":"0HLKR2GR06T4U:00000002","RequestPath":"/api/Values","CorrelationId":null,"ConnectionId":"0HLKR2GR06T4U","MachineName":"DESKTOP-AEDILCJ","Assembly":"SimpleApi","Version":"1.0.0.0"}}

[cvaishya]

I would also like the same feature to be there.
Is this already implemented or in development? Is this considered or not?

[JamesIgoe]

This would fit my needs as well. I want to preserve backward compatibility with a prior logging table that was created using Log4Net, but Log4Net is complicated to set up with Core, unlike SeriLog. I now have SeriLog creating and writing to the same table structure, but the column headings mismatch because I broke out some properties into columns for backward compatibility. If I could rename those property columns to the ones in the other table, I can preserve continuity.

[ckadluba]

@rocknet Thank you for the suggestion. Since there seems to be some demand for this, it seems quite like a useful enhancement.
Thank you also for creating an implementation in your fork. But I think your changes would not merge to the current dev branch, since I changed and refactored a lot of the internals recently.

I will take a look at your fork and try to do an implementation based on the current codebase as soon as I can. If you could help with testing, that would be awesome.

[rocknet]

If I get some time this weekend maybe I'll try to rebase my changes, depending what's there. I know it's been 15+ months, so you may be right. IIRC my changes weren't that extensive.

[ckadluba]

Awesome. I'm looking forward to it.

[rocknet]

So, the good news is I updated my branch to the latest dev and re-applied my changes, it builds and the tests still run. The bad news is that's about all I have time for. I'm not even on the project that is using this feature anymore (one that migrated from log4net to Serilog). Unfortunately I didn't add tests and don't really have the bandwidth to fire up the old project, bind to the latest code and retest.

Worst case it gives you something to go off of, as I mentioned the changes aren't crazy. The one part that might be confusing is I changed checking EventTable.Columns for a breakout of standard and additional columns separately. When I first looked at this 15 months ago, it seemed odd to me to use EventTable which is both Standard and Additional columns, but then also compare against StandardColumnNames just after it. That was my reasoning behind the change and it worked fine for me. Not sure if I was being more explicit or adding a subtle bug, so you might want to check that part.
rocknet@6ea14d7#diff-cfe9a21bb95b4178c1b756453dc1cfd4

I figure you can just get a good head start from the few commits here, but if you'd prefer a PR I can do that too.
https://github.com/rocknet/serilog-sinks-mssqlserver/tree/additionalColumnsCustomNames

I did also update the README back in the day, so hopefully that's helpful as well
rocknet@ab5e1fa

[ckadluba]

Thank you very much. I will take a look at the changes, pull them from your branch and try to add tests and integrate them asap. PR won't be necessary. Thank you for taking the time.

[ckadluba]

@rocknet I integrated your enhancement, added some tests and merged it into the dev branch. Thank you very much for the nice contribution! Prerelease 5.4.0-dev-00310 was created and published to nuget.org.

I'm closing this issue now but if some of you could help me by installing 5.4.0-dev-00310 and testing the feature, this would be of great help.