To set up the target in the configuration file, use the following syntax:

<nlog xmlns="http://www.nlog-project.org/schemas/NLog.xsd" 
      xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> 
  <targets> 
    <target name="debug" xsi:type="Debug" layout="${message}"/> 
  </targets> 
  <rules> 
    <logger name="*" minlevel="Info" writeTo="debug"/> 
  </rules> 
</nlog> 

This assumes just one target and a single rule. More configuration options are described here.

To set up the log target programmatically use code like this:

using System; 
 
using NLog; 
using NLog.Targets; 
 
class Example 
{ 
    static void Main(string[] args) 
    { 
        DebugTarget target = new DebugTarget(); 
        target.Layout = "${message}"; 
 
        NLog.Config.SimpleConfigurator.ConfigureForTargetLogging(target, LogLevel.Debug); 
 
        Logger logger = LogManager.GetLogger("Example"); 
        logger.Debug("log message"); 
        logger.Debug("another log message"); 
 
        Console.WriteLine("The debug target has been hit {0} times.", target.Counter); 
        Console.WriteLine("The last message was '{0}'.", target.LastMessage); 
    } 
}