Unable to fully configure shared ExceptionlessClient.Default Instance via Web.config

[nmdias]

Hi,

Has anyone successfully configured the shared instance of ExceptionlessClient using Web.config?

Legend has it that this should work.

ExceptionlessClient.Default.Configuration.ReadFromConfigSection();

My goal is to avoid duplicating configuration settings both in Web.config (which works well for unexpected exceptions and they are properly published) and in AppSettings. Ideally, I wouldn’t need to do this manually for exceptions that I catch myself:

ExceptionlessClient.Default.Configuration.Enabled = ApplicationSettings.ExceptionLessEnable;
ExceptionlessClient.Default.Startup(ApplicationSettings.ExceptionLessAppKey);

This would eliminate the need to define configurations separately in AppSettings.

Expected Behavior
• ExceptionlessClient.Default should read its configuration from Web.config automatically.
• No need to set values manually in code if they are already defined in Web.config.

Actual Behavior
• The configuration does not seem to be applied from Web.config, requiring explicit setup in code.

I'm using version 6, in a .NET 4.8 app.

For now, I also found a workaround with using ConfigurationManager.GetSection("exceptionless"), but it's forcing me to use reflection to access the properties, as the returned ExceptionlessSection is an internal class.

Thank you

[niemyjski]

Thanks for reaching out! Would you mind submitting a snippet of your web.config minus any extra configuration or api keys (blanked out). Also, compare your sample to our .NET Samples in this repo and see what is different.

What package do you have installed?

Calling startup() by itself should resolve all of this. There are other things that come into play here that you need to take into account as configuration is layered. As in we read from (in order)

1. attribute
2. config section
3. app settings
4. env varaibles

I'd make sure that 3 or 4 are not overriding your settings.

[nmdias]

Hi @niemyjski

Thank you for pointing me to the samples, I made some progress from that.

I have these installed:

Exceptionless 6.0.4
Exceptionless.Mvc 6.0.4

So, before I had this in my Web.config, working for unexpected exceptions, but not for auto setup:

<configuration>
    <exceptionless apiKey="somekey" enabled="true" tags="tag1, tag2" />
</configuration>

Now I changed to this, except Tags that I'm unable to get:

<configuration>
    <add key="Exceptionless:ApiKey" value="someKey" />
    <add key="Exceptionless:Enabled" value="true" />
    <add key="Exceptionless:Tags" value="Tag1, Tag2" />
</configuration>

An a call to Startup seems to read this configuration, except for tags:

ExceptionlessClient.Default.Startup();

I also tried:

<configuration>
    <add key="Exceptionless:DefaultTags" value="Tag1, Tag2" />
</configuration>

Is this possible to do? I need to set tags per Configuration and would love not to access or add more keys to my AppSettings helper for this.

Thank you

[niemyjski]

Hello,

You shouldn't need to install the Exceptionless package as it's a transitive dependency to Exceptionless.Mvc.

I think you are missing: https://github.com/exceptionless/Exceptionless.Net/blob/main/samples/Exceptionless.SampleMvc/Web.config#L66-L71

This module will automatically wire everything up :) and then you don't need to call Startup(). Although in rare cases depending on your setup there can be a race condition with module inititalization (general mvc module init issue) where Startup is needed for a split second but for 99%+ of use cases this works great.

[nmdias]

Good to know, will clean that up from Mvc projects.

Is it possible to make this happen? It reads ApiKey and Enabled, but not Exceptionless:Tags

<add key="Exceptionless:Tags" value="Tag1, Tag2" />

It's the one thing preventing me from not using my own AppSettings helper, and to stop using the exceptionless tag.

<configuration>
    <exceptionless apiKey="somekey" enabled="true" tags="tag1, tag2" />
</configuration>

For now I'm getting tags like this:

public class ExceptionlessConfig
{

    private static string _apiKey;
    public static string ApiKey
    {
        get
        {
            if (_apiKey == null)
            {
                _apiKey = GetValueForKey("ApiKey");
            }
            return _apiKey;
        }
    }

    public static bool? _enabled;
    public static bool Enabled
    {
        get
        {
            if (_enabled == null)
            {
                _enabled = bool.Parse(GetValueForKey("Enabled"));
            }
            return _enabled.GetValueOrDefault(false);
        }
    }

    public static string[] _tags;
    public static string[] Tags
    {
        get
        {
            if (_tags == null)
            {
                _tags = GetValueForKey("Tags").Split(',');
            }
            return _tags;
        }
    }

    private static string GetValueForKey(string key)
    {
        var section = ConfigurationManager.GetSection("exceptionless");
        var type = section.GetType();
        var property = type.GetProperty(key);
        var value = property.GetValue(section);
        return value.ToString();
    }

}

And managing handled exceptions in code like this:

ExceptionlessClient.Default.Configuration.Enabled = ExceptionlessConfig.Enabled;
ExceptionlessClient.Default.Startup(ExceptionlessConfig.ApiKey);
// ...

foreach (var tag in ExceptionlessConfig.Tags)
{
    ExceptionlessClient.Default.Configuration.DefaultTags.Add(tag);
}

But I would prefer to just set it up like this, and not have my own ExceptionlessConfig

<configuration>
    <add key="Exceptionless:ApiKey" value="someKey" />
    <add key="Exceptionless:Enabled" value="true" />
    <add key="Exceptionless:Tags" value="Tag1, Tag2" />
</configuration>

[nmdias]

So, basically I would like to do this:

<configuration>
    <add key="Exceptionless:ApiKey" value="someKey" />
    <add key="Exceptionless:Enabled" value="true" />
    <add key="Exceptionless:Tags" value="Tag1, Tag2" />
</configuration>

And not need this:

<configuration>
    <exceptionless apiKey="somekey" enabled="true" tags="tag1, tag2" />
</configuration>

But the first approach doesn't seem to read Tags..

[niemyjski]

This would be a very simple pr to add support for DefaultTags, would you mind opening a pr?

[nmdias]

Sure. I'll need some time but will try to figure it out.

[nmdias]

@niemyjski can you give me some pointers? Little overwhelming honestly.

[niemyjski]

No worries :-) look here

Exceptionless.Net/src/Exceptionless/Extensions/ExceptionlessConfigurationExtensions.cs

Line 393 in 1104c47

}

then add DefaultTags. I think you just need to look at other usages and filter out any null or empty, I think there was one other case missing the null or empty. We also have a parse delimited extension method that can be used, should already be used in that file. Let me know if you have any other questions. Thanks again for the help.

[nmdias]

Thanks! PR sent.. Flying a little blind, PR sent from macOS. But I was able to test with the sample app on windows, just didn't found test cases for appSettings to add.

[nmdias]

Thanks @niemyjski