Question: In my application, I work on several thousand of document a day. I'd like, in some cases some logs, one log by document. Then I'd like for a specific target change the output filename (and only the filename) at runtime.

Around the web I found how to create a target by programming me I'd like just update a the filename by programming. I tried the code below. The error I receive is "LayoutRender cannot be found 'logDirectory'.

Any idea ?

Thanks,

```
var target = (FileTarget)LogManager.Configuration.FindTargetByName("logfile");
target.FileName = "${logDirectory}/file2.txt";

LoggingConfiguration config = new LoggingConfiguration();
var asyncFileTarget = new AsyncTargetWrapper(target);
config.AddTarget("logfile", asyncFileTarget);

LogManager.Configuration = config;

```

The config file is :

```
  <nlog xmlns="http://www.nlog-project.org/schemas/NLog.xsd" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
    <variable name="logDirectory" value="C:/MyLogs"/>
    <targets>
      <target name="logfile" xsi:type="File" layout="${date:format=dd/MM/yyyy HH\:mm\:ss.fff}|${level}|${stacktrace}|${message}" fileName="${logDirectory}/file.txt" />
    </targets>

    <rules>
      <logger name="*" minlevel="Info" writeTo="logfile" />
    </rules>    
  </nlog>

```

Answer: 
[Tony's](https://stackoverflow.com/a/20757494/2009197) solution doesn't seem to work if you use NLog Async (`<targets async="true">`). I had to use the wrapper target to get my FileTarget, otherwise I get a lot of errors. I'm using NLog 2.1.

```
if (LogManager.Configuration != null && LogManager.Configuration.ConfiguredNamedTargets.Count != 0)
{
    Target target = LogManager.Configuration.FindTargetByName("yourFileName");
    if (target == null)
    {
        throw new Exception("Could not find target named: " + "file");
    }

    FileTarget fileTarget = null;
    WrapperTargetBase wrapperTarget = target as WrapperTargetBase;

    // Unwrap the target if necessary.
    if (wrapperTarget == null)
    {
        fileTarget = target as FileTarget;
    }
    else
    {
        fileTarget = wrapperTarget.WrappedTarget as FileTarget;
    }

    if (fileTarget == null)
    {
        throw new Exception("Could not get a FileTarget from " + target.GetType());
    }

    fileTarget.FileName = "SetFileNameHere";
    LogManager.ReconfigExistingLoggers();
}

```

This also doesn't change the config file, it just changes the runtime value. So I also manually edit the config file to my new value using the code below:

```
var nlogConfigFile = "NLog.config";
var xdoc = XDocument.Load(nlogConfigFile);
var ns = xdoc.Root.GetDefaultNamespace();
var fTarget = xdoc.Descendants(ns + "target")
         .FirstOrDefault(t => (string)t.Attribute("name") == "yourFileName");
fTarget.SetAttributeValue("fileName", "SetFileNameHere");
xdoc.Save(nlogConfigFile);

```
This worked for me.

```
using NLog;
using NLog.Targets;
using NLog.Targets.Wrappers;

var target = LogManager.Configuration.FindTargetByName("logfile");
var asyncTarget = target as AsyncTargetWrapper;
var fileTarget = asyncTarget.WrappedTarget as FileTarget;
var file = fileTarget.FileName;
var archiveFile = fileTarget.ArchiveFileName;

```

//FileName and ArchiveFileName are of type Layout. ToString gives the string representaion. We can change it and assign it back. Remember to put .Trim('\'') for removing the extra single quotes that gets added while converting to string.