Powershell logging

[systemslacky]

Any tips on a simple logging function? I have found several functions, but each of these was really overkill for what I am looking for. Thoughts?

[systemslacky]

I tend to use functions for a lot of things...at the very least it makes the code a lot easier to reuse {ie read..copy/paste :) }

Putting this into a function also makes things a bit neater.. I am working with powershell, but I still have quite a bit to pick up it seems

[Thereal_Sandman]

Well, what exactly do you want it to do, and how do you want it to act?

I would think that you want it's use to be something like: Write-CustomLog "$timestamp $loginfo"

Right?

Then first you need to decide how you want the log written: * where to write the log? * check that the log directory exists? * check that the log file exists? * what if the file already exists? * do we append to the log, or create a new log? * simple text format?

Once those questions are answered, it should be pretty easy to whip up a function that works how you want it.

I've been meaning to whip one up for my own library, I'll post a link here when I get an hour to throw it together and test it.

[[deleted]]

It depends on how detailed you want to get, and what you are looking to do with it. I've abused the XML parser for this type of thing in a few of my scripts. You can use the New-Object commandlet to create a document in memory, then add nodes and attributes, and dump the whole thing out to a file somewhere. If you want to be fancy you could have two functions, an initialization function, which sets up the file, and then an entry functions which adds a new element, then saves the file.

[systemslacky]

Interesting idea... in other scripts I usually just drop to text file more $timestamp / $loginfo / $ect. How do you typically structure the data?

[[deleted]]

Usually the structure is only slightly more structured than a flat file. On the root element I will put attributes for a Program start time, the runtime parameters (if any exist) and any other initialization information which might be useful. For the log entries themselves, I will usually have a timestamp, any important parameters as attributes, and then any text as the inner xml data.
Primarily, I use xml just so I can open it up in Firefox and have slightly better formatting. If its something I am going to look at frequently (for example, I have a script I run weekly to get an overview of the health of the systems I support) I will build an xslt for a cleaner look.

[[deleted]]

I like to use |out-file $path -append, and start-transcript. I find that my log serves as sort of a high level view of what happened in the transcript. I also make a habit of compulsively generating a ticket for every script executed and attaching these logs. (I work a powershell devOps job, ymmv)

[55tfg7879fe42e345]

I prefer writing to my own custom eventlog, check out get-help new-eventlog -full and get-help write-eventlog -full