NLog - Documentation

Mail Target

Sends logging messages by email using SMTP protocol.

Assembly	Class	.NET Framework			.NET CF		Mono on Windows		Mono on Unix
Assembly	Class	1.0	1.1	2.0	1.0	2.0	1.0	2.0	1.0	2.0
NLog.dll	NLog.Targets.MailTarget

Parameters (blue fields are required):

Name Type Description

name

string

The name of the target.

addNewLines

boolean

Whether to add new lines between log entries.

bcc

string

BCC email addresses separated by semicolons (e.g. john@domain.com;jane@domain.com)

body

string

Mail message body (repeated for each log message send in one mail)

Default value is: ${message}.

string

CC email addresses separated by semicolons (e.g. john@domain.com;jane@domain.com)

encoding

string

Encoding to be used for sending e-mail.

Default value is: UTF8.

footer

string ${}

Footer

from

string

Sender's email address (e.g. joe@domain.com)

header

string ${}

Header

html

boolean

Send message as HTML instead of plain text.

Default value is: False.

smtpAuthentication

SmtpAuthenticationMode

SMTP Authentication mode.

Default value is: None.

Possible values are:

None - No authentication.
Basic - Basic - username and password
Ntlm - NTLM Authentication

smtpPassword

string

The password used to authenticate against SMTP server (used when SmtpAuthentication is set to "basic").

smtpPort

integer

The port that SMTP Server is listening on.

Default value is: 25.

smtpServer

string

SMTP Server to be used for sending.

smtpUsername

string

The username used to connect to SMTP server (used when SmtpAuthentication is set to "basic").

subject

string

Mail subject.

Default value is: Message from NLog on ${machinename}.

string

Recipients' email addresses separated by semicolons (e.g. john@domain.com;jane@domain.com)

Example:

To set up the target in the configuration file, use the following syntax:

<nlog xmlns="http://www.nlog-project.org/schemas/NLog.xsd" 
      xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> 
  <targets> 
    <target name="mail" xsi:type="Mail" smtpServer="192.168.0.15" 
            from="jaak@jkowalski.net" to="jaak@jkowalski.net" 
            subject="test subject"/> 
  </targets> 
  <rules> 
    <logger name="*" minlevel="Debug" writeTo="mail"/> 
  </rules> 
</nlog>

This assumes just one target and a single rule. More configuration options are described here.

To set up the log target programmatically use code like this:

using System; 
 
using NLog; 
using NLog.Targets; 
 
class Example 
{ 
    static void Main(string[] args) 
    { 
        try 
        { 
            Console.WriteLine("Setting up the target..."); 
            MailTarget target = new MailTarget(); 
 
            target.SmtpServer = "192.168.0.15"; 
            target.From = "jaak@jkowalski.net"; 
            target.To = "jaak@jkowalski.net"; 
            target.Subject = "sample subject"; 
 
            NLog.Config.SimpleConfigurator.ConfigureForTargetLogging(target, LogLevel.Debug); 
 
            Console.WriteLine("Sending..."); 
            Logger logger = LogManager.GetLogger("Example"); 
            Console.WriteLine("Sent."); 
            logger.Debug("log message"); 
        } 
        catch (Exception ex) 
        { 
            Console.WriteLine("EX: {0}", ex); 
                 
        } 
    } 
}

Mail target works best when used with BufferingWrapper target which lets you send multiple logging messages in single mail

To set up the buffered mail target in the configuration file, use the following syntax:

<nlog xmlns="http://www.nlog-project.org/schemas/NLog.xsd" 
      xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> 
  <targets> 
    <target name="mail" xsi:type="BufferingWrapper" bufferSize="5"> 
      <target xsi:type="Mail" smtpServer="192.168.0.15" 
              from="jaak@jkowalski.net" to="jaak@jkowalski.net" 
              subject="test subject"/> 
    </target> 
  </targets> 
  <rules> 
    <logger name="*" minlevel="Debug" writeTo="mail"/> 
  </rules> 
</nlog>

To set up the buffered mail target programmatically use code like this:

using System; 
 
using NLog; 
using NLog.Targets; 
using NLog.Targets.Wrappers; 
 
class Example 
{ 
    static void Main(string[] args) 
    { 
        try 
        { 
            NLog.Internal.InternalLogger.LogToConsole = true; 
            NLog.Internal.InternalLogger.LogLevel = LogLevel.Trace; 
            Console.WriteLine("Setting up the target..."); 
            MailTarget target = new MailTarget(); 
 
            target.SmtpServer = "192.168.0.15"; 
            target.From = "jaak@jkowalski.net"; 
            target.To = "jaak@jkowalski.net"; 
            target.Subject = "sample subject"; 
            target.Body = "${message}${newline}"; 
 
            BufferingTargetWrapper buffer = new BufferingTargetWrapper(target, 5); 
 
            NLog.Config.SimpleConfigurator.ConfigureForTargetLogging(buffer, LogLevel.Debug); 
 
            Console.WriteLine("Sending..."); 
            Logger logger = LogManager.GetLogger("Example"); 
            logger.Debug("log message 1"); 
            logger.Debug("log message 2"); 
            logger.Debug("log message 3"); 
            logger.Debug("log message 4"); 
            logger.Debug("log message 5"); 
            logger.Debug("log message 6"); 
            logger.Debug("log message 7"); 
            logger.Debug("log message 8"); 
 
            // this should send 2 mails - one with messages 1..5, the other with messages 6..8 
            Console.WriteLine("Sent."); 
        } 
        catch (Exception ex) 
        { 
            Console.WriteLine("EX: {0}", ex); 
                 
        } 
    } 
}

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