HttpClient in an NLog target - c#

I need to create a Target that uses HttpClient. HttpClient does not contain any synchronous methods, they are all Task returning Async calls. What is the best way to use this in an NLog target, seeing as the api does not seem to be async/await aware?

Update NLog 4.6
NLog 4.6 introduces AsyncTaskTarget that ensures correct ordering, and also makes it easy to perform batching.
Old answer:
Maybe something like this should work:
public class CustomTarget : Target
{
protected override async void Write(NLog.Common.AsyncLogEventInfo logEvent)
{
try
{
await WriteAsync(logEvent.LogEvent).ConfigureAwait(false);
logEvent.Continuation(null);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
InternalLogger.Error(ex, "Failed to sent message");
logEvent.Continuation(ex);
}
}
}
Or steal the code from this PR: https://github.com/NLog/NLog/pull/2006

If you want to make things simple then you can just do a Wait() on the async-task. Then just wrap your custom-target using the AsyncTargetWrapper. Then you also don't have to worry about having too many active http-requests.
But NLog has no issue with targets that performs deferred log write-operations. The only required contract is that the async-continuation provided together with the LogEventInfo is called after the deferred log-write-operation has finally completed (Maybe look at the NetworkTarget for for some inspiration)

I have implemented httpclient with aysnc-wrapper target.
You can install and use it from nuget package
https://www.nuget.org/packages/NLog.HttpClient

Related

Handle all exceptions in SignalR hubs in Asp.Net Core 3.1

In Web API all the exceptions can be cought by Middleware. In Asp.Net Core 5.0 Hub Filters will do that job.
But how to handle exceptions in Asp.Net Core 3.1 in SignalR hubs? Is there a sole way to write try/catch in every methods like below?
[Authorize]
public class OrdersHub : BaseHub
{
public async Task GetOrder(Guid requestId, int orderId)
{
try
{
var data = await ordersService.GetOrderAsync(orderId);
await Clients.Caller.SendAsync("GetOrderResult", requestId, result);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
await Clients.Caller.Reject(requestId, ex);
}
}
}
You may know that ASP.NET SignalR has support for HubPipeline modules that provide a way to handle hub exceptions globally.
But from this doc we can find HubPipeline modules is no longer supported in ASP.NET Core SignalR, and currently it seems not provide alternative approach to handle incomming errors globally.
As you mentioned, we can wrap code in try-catch blocks and log the exception object or manually send it to caller.
Please note that exceptions often contain sensitive information, for security reasons sending detailed information to clients is not recommended in production.
Besides, ASP.NET Core SignalR provides built-in diagnostics logging feature that could help capture and log useful transports and Hub related information, which could help troubleshoot the issue.
Note: you can check this github issue that discuss same requirement about "Signalr .net core central exception handling".
As of .net 5.0, you can use hub filters: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/signalr/hub-filters?view=aspnetcore-5.0
In my case, I wanted to log all unhandled exceptions thrown in my signalr hub. I'm using .NET 6 and did the following.
Add ExceptionFilter.cs.
public class ExceptionFilter : IHubFilter
{
private readonly ILogger _logger;
public ExceptionFilter(ILogger logger)
{
_logger = logger;
}
public async ValueTask<object> InvokeMethodAsync(
HubInvocationContext invocationContext, Func<HubInvocationContext, ValueTask<object>> next)
{
try
{
return await next(invocationContext);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
_logger.LogError($"Exception calling '{invocationContext.HubMethodName}': {ex}");
throw;
}
}
}
Add ExceptionFilter to the signalr options.
builder.Services.AddSignalR(options =>
{
options.AddFilter<ExceptionFilter>();
});
Register ExceptionFilter for DI.
builder.Services.AddSingleton<ExceptionFilter>();
I tested this by manually throwing an exception in a hub method, and the catch block gets executed.

What is the simplest way to run a single background task from a controller in .NET Core?

I have an ASP.NET Core web app, with WebAPI controllers. All I am trying to do is, in some of the controllers, be able to kick off a process that would run in the background, but the controller should go ahead and return before that process is done. I don't want the consumers of the service to have to wait for this job to finish.
I have seen all of the posts about IHostedService and BackgroundService, but none of them seem to be what I want. Also, all these examples show you how to set things up, but not how to actually call it, or I am not understanding some of it.
I tried these, but when you register an IHostedService in Startup, it runs immediately at that point in time. This is not what I want. I don't want to run the task at startup, I want to be able to call it from a controller when it needs to. Also, I may have several different ones, so just registering services.AddHostedService() won't work because I might have a MyServiceB and MyServiceC, so how do I get the right one from the controller (I can't just inject IHostedService)?
Ultimately, everything I have seen has been a huge, convoluted mess of code for something that seems like it should be such a simple thing to do. What am I missing?
You have the following options:
IHostedService classes can be long running methods that run in the background for the lifetime of your app. In order to make them to handle some sort of background task, you need to implement some sort of "global" queue system in your app for the controllers to store the data/events. This queue system can be as simple as a Singleton class with a ConcurrentQueue that you pass in to your controller, or something like an IDistributedCache or more complex external pub/sub systems. Then you can just poll the queue in your IHostedService and run certain operations based on it. Here is a microsoft example of IHostedService implementation for handling queues https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/fundamentals/host/hosted-services?view=aspnetcore-3.1&tabs=visual-studio#queued-background-tasks
Note that the Singleton class approach can cause issues in multi-server environments.
Example implementation of the Singleton approach can be like:
// Needs to be registered as a Singleton in your Startup.cs
public class BackgroundJobs {
public ConcurrentQueue<string> BackgroundTasks {get; set;} = new ConcurrentQueue<string>();
}
public class MyController : ControllerBase{
private readonly BackgroundJobs _backgroundJobs;
public MyController(BackgroundJobs backgroundJobs) {
_backgroundJobs = backgroundJobs;
}
public async Task<ActionResult> FireAndForgetEndPoint(){
_backgroundJobs.BackgroundTasks.Enqueue("SomeJobIdentifier");
}
}
public class MyBackgroundService : IHostedService {
private readonly BackgroundJobs _backgroundJobs;
public MyBackgroundService(BackgroundJobs backgroundJobs)
{
_backgroundJobs = backgroundJobs;
}
public void StartAsync(CancellationToken ct)
{
while(!ct.IsCancellationRequested)
{
if(_backgroundJobs.BackgroundTasks.TryDequeue(out var jobId))
{
// Code to do long running operation
}
Task.Delay(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1)); // You really don't want an infinite loop here without having any sort of delays.
}
}
}
Create a method that returns a Task, pass in a IServiceProvider to that method and create a new Scope in there to make sure ASP.NET would not kill the task when the controller Action completes. Something like
IServiceProvider _serviceProvider;
public async Task<ActionResult> FireAndForgetEndPoint()
{
// Do stuff
_ = FireAndForgetOperation(_serviceProvider);
Return Ok();
}
public async Task FireAndForgetOperation(IServiceProvider serviceProvider)
{
using (var scope = _serviceProvider.CreateScope()){
await Task.Delay(1000);
//... Long running tasks
}
}
Update: Here is the Microsoft example of doing something similar: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/performance/performance-best-practices?view=aspnetcore-3.1#do-not-capture-services-injected-into-the-controllers-on-background-threads
As I understand from your question you want to create a fire and forget task like logging to database. In this scenario you don't have to wait for log to be inserted database. It also took much of my time to discover an easily implementable solution. Here is what I have found:
In your controller parameters, add IServiceScopeFactory. This will not effect the request body or header. After that create a scope and call your service over it.
[HttpPost]
public IActionResult MoveRecordingToStorage([FromBody] StreamingRequestModel req, [FromServices] IServiceScopeFactory serviceScopeFactory)
{
// Move record to Azure storage in the background
Task.Run(async () =>
{
try
{
using var scope = serviceScopeFactory.CreateScope();
var repository = scope.ServiceProvider.GetRequiredService<ICloudStorage>();
await repository.UploadFileToAzure(req.RecordedPath, key, req.Id, req.RecordCode);
}
catch(Exception e)
{
Console.WriteLine(e);
}
});
return Ok("In progress..");
}
After posting your request, you will immediately receive In Progress.. text but your task will run in the background.
One more thing, If you don't create your task in this way and try to call database operations you will receive an error like this which means your database object is already dead and you are trying to access it;
Cannot access a disposed object. A common cause of this error is disposing a context that was resolved from dependency injection and then later trying to use the same context instance elsewhere in your application. This may occur if you are calling Dispose() on the context, or wrapping the context in a using statement. If you are using dependency injection, you should let the dependency injection container take care of disposing context instances.\r\nObject name: 'DBContext'.
My code is based on Repository pattern. You should not forget to inject service class in your Startup.cs
services.AddScoped<ICloudStorage, AzureCloudStorage>();
Find the detailed documentation here.
What is the simplest way to run a single background task from a controller in .NET Core?
I don't want the consumers of the service to have to wait for this job to finish.
Ultimately, everything I have seen has been a huge, convoluted mess of code for something that seems like it should be such a simple thing to do. What am I missing?
The problem is that ASP.NET is a framework for writing web services, which are applications that respond to requests. But as soon as your code says "I don't want the consumers of the service to have to wait", then you're talking about running code outside of a request (i.e., request-extrinsic code). This is why all solutions are complex: your code has to bypass/extend the framework itself in an attempt to force it to do something it wasn't designed to do.
The only proper solution for request-extrinsic code is to have a durable queue with a separate background process. Anything in-process (e.g., ConcurrentQueue with an IHostedService) will have reliability problems; in particular, those solutions will occasionally lose work.

PowerShell System.Management.Automation.Runspaces vs TAP in C#

I've recently run into a use case where the "Async" suffix recommended by the .NET Task-based Asynchronous Pattern (TAP) conflicts with what's already in existence.
I'm dealing with System.Management.Automation.Runspaces.Runspace during the course of attempting PowerShell remoting to execute cmdlets as part of my app.
Ignoring the questions that arise around whether it's best practice to knock-up a remoting session each time you want to run a cmdlet (for an enterprise scale application this might be a lot) or to create a connection and attempt to maintain it during the app's lifetime (with reconnection logic)...
My application is based on TAP which proliferates from the WebApi2 controller all the way down to the backend, what I'm trying to do is asynchronously open a Runspace connection - but noticed that there's already an OpenAsync method which isn't awaitable and returns void - which is like some weird mash-up between async void (for event handlers), void (non-async) and the Async suffix.
I'm using Stephen Cleary's Nito.AsyncEx nuget package to provide me with a AsyncAutoResetEvent which I can asynchronously await before attempting connection/reconnection).
The question is: should I care about the fact that my code really isn't going to be properly "async" in using either Open or OpenAsync on the Runspace?
If I should care - what's the best practice in this situation? It doesn't look like Microsoft have released updated DLLs which provide awaitable Open methods for the Runspace. Strangely despite MS giving information on how to use these libraries, they've added the caveat on the nuget site:
Versions 6.1.7601.* are unofficial packages for .Net 4.0 and are not
supported by Microsoft.
There also seems to be this DLL-esque package on nuget from Microsoft, aagggghh!
Currently my plan is something akin to this:
public async Task<Result> StartAsync()
{
if (!IsConnected)
{
try
{
await _asyncRunspaceLock.WaitAsync();
if (!IsConnected)
{
var protocol = IsHttpsEnabled ? "https" : "http";
var serverUrl = $"{protocol}://{Fqdn}/OcsPowershell";
var uri = new Uri(serverUrl);
var connectionInfo = new WSManConnectionInfo(uri, ShelUri, PSCredential.Empty)
{
SkipRevocationCheck = true,
};
var runspace = runspaceFactory.CreateRunspace(connectionInfo);
runspace.OpenAsync();
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
// TODO: Handle logging the 3rd party exception at the lowest level.
return Result.Fail(ex.Message);
}
finally
{
_asyncRunspaceLock.Set();
}
}
return Result.Ok();
}
It's a work in progress, I guess the same issue crops up around the RunspaceFactory's CreateRunspace static method which isn't async (at least it isn't named with the Async suffix).
Any helpful advice or experience would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
peteski
From the documentation:
If you're adding a TAP method to a class that already contains that method name with the Async suffix, use the suffix TaskAsync instead. For example, if the class already has a GetAsync method, use the name GetTaskAsync.

Servicestack - Write all exceptions to custom logger

I am trying to find how to catch all exceptions (raised on the server, not the client) from my ServiceStack services in order to write them to my custom logger (which writes it to the eventlog). Now I am confused what implementation to use. I find postings implementing a custom ServiceRunner which looks rather complicated.
I found in the documentation you can use something like:
public override void Configure(Funq.Container container)
{
this.ServiceExceptionHandler = (req, ex) => { WRITE EXCEPTION TO MY OWN LOGGER };
}
Now I am stuck because this method is not available (there is a collection named ServiceExceptionHandlers, note the 's' at the end).
You need to use the .Add method on the ServiceExceptionHandler because you can setup more than one handler, i.e. if you have multiple loggers. See here for more information.
You need two methods to catch all exceptions. One to catch the exceptions in your service, and one to catch the others. The code below shows how to handle both cases.
public override void Configure(Container container)
{
//Handle Exceptions occurring in Services:
this.ServiceExceptionHandler.Add((httpReq, request, exception) => {
// Log your exceptions here
...
// Call the default exception handler or prepare your own custom response
return DtoUtils.CreateErrorResponse(request, exception);
});
// Handle Unhandled Exceptions occurring outside of Services
// E.g. in Request binding or filters:
this.ExceptionHandler = (req, res, operationName, ex) => {
res.Write("Error: {0}: {1}".Fmt(ex.GetType().Name, ex.Message));
res.EndServiceStackRequest(skipHeaders: true);
};
}
Note:
The reason that ServiceStack is expecting a collection of handlers, and your example code didn't show this, is because that documentation is for v3 (BSD open source version of ServiceStack), the corresponding documentation is here, but you are running ServiceStack v4 (Commercial) where improvements have been made to allow multiple actions to be taken.
Hope this helps.

How to refactor logging in C#?

In my services all exposed methods have:
try
{
// the method core is written here
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
Log.Append(ex);
}
It's boring and ugly to repeat it over and over again. Is there any way to avoid that? Is there a better way to keep the service working even if exceptions occur and keep sending the exception details to the Log class?
Try AOP. This is the most widely-used selling point of AOP.
Also, see this discussion here on SO.
You could set up a generic error handling method for all uncaught exceptions like so:
AppDomain.CurrentDomain.UnhandledException += new UnhandledExceptionEventHandler(UnhandledException);
Depending on what went wrong, you may not be able to recover from the error... but this should hopefully give you some idea of what what went wrong. If it gets to the point where your application code hasn't handled the exception gracefully, this method could attempt to reinitialize the service to a known working state.
I came up with a semi-solution right now. I can refactor the code:
public TResult ExecuteAndLogOnError(Func<TResult> func)
{
try
{
return func();
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
// logging ...
}
}
And then you can call it on each method:
return ExecuteAndLogOnError(() =>
{
// method core goes here..
});
Which is 4 lines shorter than the original scenario.
In such cases I always use centralized error handlers.
In WCF it is very easy. Some more details:
http://www.haveyougotwoods.com/archive/2009/06/24/creating-a-global-error-handler-in-wcf.aspx
Basically, you just implement the IServiceBehavior interface and then provide your own error handler. That is the best way to do this because you don't have to write any code that handles fatal exceptions (I mean exceptions that you can only log and you don't know what to do about them) in your methods.
If all your doing is logging then just log the error at a later stage... No need to log the error early. If you do more than log the error, well then you're gonna need the try..catch anyway. And if you swallow exceptions (IE. just log them and then go on as if nothings happened) then maybe you're doing it wrong...
I once used something like the Template Function Pattern to resolve a problem like this. I had a base class that did something like:
public void Execute()
{
try
{
ExecuteImplementation();
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
// Log ex
}
}
public abstract void ExecuteImplementation();
There was one derived class per web service operation. The derived classes each implemented ExecuteImplementation.
The web service operations did:
[WebMethod]
public Result WebOperation(Request request)
{
WebOperationClass instance = new WebOperationClass(request);
instance.Execute();
return instance.Result;
}
Exception filters would be good for this. Alas, .NET supports them through MSIL, C++/CLI, VB.NET, but not C#.
If all you're doing in your catch is logging the exception, you could maybe just use a custom error page and let ELMAH log all your uncaught exceptions.
A previous poster brought up AOP (Aspecte-Oriented Programming).
I use PostSharp for basic logging traces/exceptions.
It's quite easy to use and setup.
Check out this link and watch the tutorial.
http://www.sharpcrafters.com/postsharp
--crap it is no longer open source ... anyways you can grab Postsharp1.5 and mess around with it to see if it is something you are interested in it.
I am also in no way affiliated with PostSharp. I'm just a user.

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