What's the purpose of LoggingChannel.Level - windows

Question

I'm trying to understand the proper way to use Windows.Foundation.Diagnostics.LoggingChannel. In particular I'd like to understand the purpose behind the Level property and when is this property set.
As described in the MSDN documentation of LoggingChannel, the Level property is read-only. So how can I set the level that a channel accepts messages at?
Currently what I have designed as a logger for my app is something like below:
public class Logger
{
public LoggingLevel LoggerLoggingLevel { get; set; }
private LoggingSession _session;
private LoggingChannel _channel;
public Logger()
{
_channel = new LoggingChannel("MyChannel");
_session = new LoggingSession("MySession");
_session.AddLoggingChannel(_channel);
}
public void LogMessage(string msg, LoggingLevel level)
{
if (level >= LoggerLoggingLevel)
{
_channel.LogMessage(msg, level);
}
}
.
.
.
}
// The consumer of the Logger class will instantiate an instance of it,
// sets the LoggerLoggingLevel, and then starts logging messages at various levels.
// At any point, the consumer can change LoggerLoggingLevel to start accepting
// messages at different levels.
IS this the right approach or is there a better way (for example by somehow setting the level of _channel and then passing the message & level to the channel, letting the channel decide whether it should filter out the message or accept and log it)?

Answer 1

LoggingChannel.Level tells you "somebody has expressed interest in receiving messages from you that are of severity 'Level' or higher". This property will be set automatically by the runtime when somebody subscribes to events from your LoggingChannel instance. (Within your app, you can subscribe to your app's events using the LoggingSession class; outside of your app, you can record your app's events using a tool like tracelog or xperf.)
In simple scenarios, you don't need to worry about the value of LoggingChannel.Level. The LoggingChannel.LogMessage function already checks the value of LoggingChannel.Level. It also checks the value of LoggingChannel.Enabled, which tells you whether anybody is subscribed to your events at any level. (Note that the value of LoggingChannel.Level is UNDEFINED and MEANINGLESS unless LoggingChannel.Enabled is true.) In normal use, you don't need to worry about LoggingChannel.Enabled or LoggingChannel.Level -- just call LogMessage and let LoggingChannel check the levels for you.
LoggingChannel exposes the Enabled and Level properties to support a more complex scenario where it is expensive to gather the data you are about to log. In this case, you would probably like to skip gathering the data if nobody is listening for your event. You would then write code like this:
if (channel.Enabled && channel.Level <= eventLevel)
{
string expensiveData = GatherExpensiveData();
channel.LogMessage(expensiveData, eventLevel);
}
Note that the Windows 10 version of LoggingChannel added a bunch of new methods to make life a bit easier. If your program will run on Windows 10 or later, you can use the IsEnabled method instead of separate checks for Enabled and Level:
if (channel.IsEnabled(eventLevel))
{
string expensiveData = GatherExpensiveData();
channel.LogMessage(expensiveData, eventLevel);
}
A bunch of other stuff was also added to LoggingChannel for Windows 10. You can now log complex events (strongly-typed fields) instead of just strings, you can define keywords and opcodes (look up ETW documentation for more information), and you can basically have your LoggingChannel act like a first-class ETW citizen.