Cannot implicitly convert type string to serilog.formatting.ITextformatter

Question

How to convert a string object to Serilog.formatting.ITextformatter.

I am trying to write Serilog's logs to Cloudwatch and one of the steps is to create a custom text formatter. Now I need to convert my custom format to match IText format. I am using the library in this Github repo: https://github.com/Cimpress-MCP/serilog-sinks-awscloudwatch

public class LogFactory
{

    public ILoggerFactory ConfigureLogger()
    {


        LoggerFactory factory = new LoggerFactory();

        var logGroupName = "MyLogGroupName";
     var region = Amazon.RegionEndpoint.EUWest1;


        const string outputTemplate = "{Timestamp:HH:mm} [{Level}] {MachineName} {EnvironmentUserName} ({ThreadId}) ({ProcessId}) {SourceContext}  {Message}{NewLine}{Exception}";
        var options = new CloudWatchSinkOptions()
        {
            // the name of the CloudWatch Log group for logging
            LogGroupName = logGroupName,

            TextFormatter = outputTemplate, //I get the error here.

            // the main formatter of the log event


            // other defaults defaults
            MinimumLogEventLevel = LogEventLevel.Information,
            BatchSizeLimit = 100,
            QueueSizeLimit = 10000,
            Period = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10),
            CreateLogGroup = true,
            LogStreamNameProvider = new DefaultLogStreamProvider(),
            RetryAttempts = 5
        };
        var client = new AmazonCloudWatchLogsClient(region);
    Log.Logger = new LoggerConfiguration()
          .WriteTo.AmazonCloudWatch(options, client)
          .CreateLogger();

        return factory;
    }
}

To write the Serilog to Amazon Clouwatch.

Answer 1

You can use Serilog.Formatting.Display.MessageTemplateTextFormatter and pass in your normal output template string in the constructor.

var textFormatter = new MessageTemplateTextFormatter(outputTemplate, null);