I was recently writing an application that required some background processing to be handled by either a windows service or a console app, it was a multithreaded app and I was using Enterprise Library to handle exceptions by policy (logging to event log for monitoring). When I was testing the console app I realised it should really be writing the exceptions to the console as well as the event log – otherwise what’s the point of the console right!

A quick bit of investigation (and I mean really quick) and I find out Enterprise Library logging block allows you to use the ConsoleTraceListener from the System.Diagnostics namespace – so adding:

   1:  <add listenerDataType="Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Logging.Configuration.SystemDiagnosticsTraceListenerData, Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Logging, Version=6.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"

   2:      type="System.Diagnostics.ConsoleTraceListener, System, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"

   3:      name="System Diagnostics Console Trace Listener" />

to the config of the console app, and configuring to use this listener as well was all that was needed.