Logging without Code Bloat

I was wondering if any of you know any best practices or design patterns so that I can have good logging in my programs without them looking messy or bloated.

I am currently using C# and NLog, however I guess any advice here would be language and tool agnostic.

The problem we have is that we want to have good logging, however we can't seem to find a way around having many lines which just log operations, which can turn a simple method like this:

void Foo()
{ 
    Bar bar = dbContext().Bars.First();
    bool someCondition = bar.DoSomething();
    if (someContition)
    {
        dbContext().FooBars.Add(new FooBar());
    }
}

Into something which looks like this:

void Foo()
{ 
    _logger.Info("Getting first bar from database...");

    Bar bar = dbContext().Bars.First();

    _logger.Info("First bar returned from database, id = {0}", bar.Id);

    _logger.Info("Doing something on bar with id = {0}", bar.Id);
    bool someCondition = bar.DoSomething();

    _logger.Info("Something done on bar with id = {0}, response = {1}", bar.Id, someCondition);

    if (someContition)
    {
        _logger.Warn("Adding new FooBar to database");
        dbContext().FooBars.Add(new FooBar());
        _logger.Warn("Added new FooBar to database successfully");
    }
}

Here we now have more logging lines than code lines.

However I am being told by operations that this level of logging is required, and at the moment is still too coarse.

Is there any way around this ugly manual logging, or am I stuck with it?

This kind of trace logging could conceivably be solved with an Aspect.

Aspect oriented programming allows you to add boilerplate-style code to your program without actually writing the boilerplate inline. You could, for example, add an aspect than logged a method name and parameters every time a program entered a method, and then logged the method name and return value every time a method returned.

Of course, you don't necessarily want to log every method. Instead, most aspect frameworks allow you to indicate which code you want the boilerplate added to.

I don't know enough about C# to recommend a specific aspect-oriented framework to use, or appropriate syntax for you. Sorry.

StackExchange Code Review Q#45193, answer score: 30