NLog.Web.AspNetCore layout renderers are empty - asp.net-core

Question

I'm developing an ASP.net core (2.2) MVC application but I can't get the logging to work. The AspNetCore layout renderers return empty values. I installed following packages:
<PackageReference Include="NLog" Version="4.6.2" />
<PackageReference Include="NLog.Extensions.Logging" Version="1.4.0" />
<PackageReference Include="NLog.Web.AspNetCore" Version="4.8.1" />
nlog.config:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<nlog xmlns="http://www.nlog-project.org/schemas/NLog.xsd"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
autoReload="true"
internalLogLevel="Trace"
internalLogFile="c:\temp\internal-nlog.txt">
<!-- enable asp.net core layout renderers -->
<extensions>
<add assembly="NLog.Web.AspNetCore"/>
</extensions>
<!-- the targets to write to -->
<targets>
<!-- write logs to file -->
<target xsi:type="File" name="allfile" fileName="c:\temp\nlog-all-${shortdate}.log"
layout="${longdate}|${event-properties:item=EventId_Id}|${uppercase:${level}}|${logger}|${message} ${exception:format=tostring}" />
<!-- another file log, only own logs. Uses some ASP.NET core renderers -->
<target xsi:type="File" name="ownFile-web" fileName="c:\temp\nlog-api-${shortdate}.log"
layout="${longdate}|${event-properties:item=EventId_Id}|${uppercase:${level}}|${logger}|${message} ${exception:format=tostring}|url: ${aspnet-request-url}|action: ${aspnet-mvc-action}" />
</targets>
<!-- rules to map from logger name to target -->
<rules>
<!--All logs, including from Microsoft-->
<logger name="*" minlevel="Trace" writeTo="allfile" />
<!--Skip non-critical Microsoft logs and so log only own logs-->
<logger name="Microsoft.*" maxlevel="Info" final="true" />
<logger name="IdentityServer4.*" maxlevel="Info" final="true" />
<!-- BlackHole without writeTo -->
<logger name="*" minlevel="Trace" writeTo="ownFile-web" />
</rules>
</nlog>
Startup.cs
services.AddLogging(builder =>
{
builder.ClearProviders();
builder.SetMinimumLevel(LogLevel.Trace);
builder.AddNLog();
});
Log:
2019-04-19 11:55:01.2521||INFO|MyApp.API.Controllers.ConfigController| |url: |action:

Answer 1

The easy way is just to follow the wiki-guide, and call UseNLog():
https://github.com/NLog/NLog.Web/wiki/Getting-started-with-ASP.NET-Core-2#4-update-programcs
But if you like to do things your own way, and do it like in ASP.NET Core ver. 1:
https://github.com/NLog/NLog/issues/2859#issuecomment-415865357