Application Insights for ASP.NET Core

• 06/03/2018
• 8 minutes to read
• Contributors
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 

Azure Application Insights provides in-depth monitoring of your web application down to the code level. You can easily monitor your web application for availability, performance, and usage. You can also quickly identify and diagnose errors in your application without waiting for a user to report them.

This article walks you through creating a sample ASP.NET Core Razor Pages application in Visual Studio, and how to start monitoring with Azure Application Insights.

Prerequisites

• NET Core 2.0.0 SDK or later.
• Visual Studio 2017 version 15.7.3 or later with the ASP.NET and web development workload.

Create an ASP.NET Core project in Visual Studio

1. Right-click and Launch Visual Studio 2017 as administrator.

2. Select File > New > Project (Ctrl-Shift-N).

   

3. Expand Visual C# > Select .NET Core > ASP.NET Core Web Application. Enter a Name > Solution name > Check Create new Git repository.

   

4. Select .Net Core > ASP.NET Core 2.0 Web Application > OK.

   

Application Insights search

By default in Visual Studio version 2015 Update 2 or greater with an ASP.NET Core 2+ based project you can take advantage of Application Insights search even before you explicitly add Application Insights to your project.

To test out this functionality:

1. Run your app by clicking IIS Express

2. Select View > Other Windows > Application Insights search.

   

3. The debug session telemetry is currently available for local analysis only. To fully enable Application Insights, select Telemetry Readiness in the upper right, or follow the steps in the next section.

   

Add Application Insights Telemetry

1. Select Project > Add Application Insights Telemetry.... (Or you can right-click Connected Services and select Add Connected Service.)

   

2. Select Get Started. (Depending on your version of Visual Studio the text may vary slightly. Some older versions instead, have a Start Free button.)

   

3. Select an appropriate Subscription > Resource > Register.

Changes Made to your project

Application Insights is low overhead. To review the modifications made to your project by adding Application Insights telemetry:

Select View > Team Explorer (Ctrl+, Ctrl+M) > Project > Changes

• Four changes total:

  

• One new file is created:

  ConnectedService.json

{
  "ProviderId": "Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.ConnectedService.ConnectedServiceProvider",
  "Version": "8.12.10405.1",
  "GettingStartedDocument": {
    "Uri": "https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=798432"
  }
}

• Three files are modified: (Additional comments added to highlight changes)

  appsettings.json

{
  "Logging": {
    "IncludeScopes": false,
    "LogLevel": {
      "Default": "Warning"
    }
  },
// Changes to file post adding Application Insights Telemetry:
  "ApplicationInsights": {
    "InstrumentationKey": "10101010-1010-1010-1010-101010101010"
  }
}
//

ContosoDotNetCore.csproj

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Web">
  <PropertyGroup>
    <TargetFramework>netcoreapp2.0</TargetFramework>
 <!--Changes to file post adding Application Insights Telemetry:-->
    <ApplicationInsightsResourceId>/subscriptions/2546c5a9-fa20-4de1-9f4a-62818b14b8aa/resourcegroups/Default-ApplicationInsights-EastUS/providers/microsoft.insights/components/DotNetCore</ApplicationInsightsResourceId>
    <ApplicationInsightsAnnotationResourceId>/subscriptions/2546c5a9-fa20-4de1-9f4a-62818b14b8aa/resourcegroups/Default-ApplicationInsights-EastUS/providers/microsoft.insights/components/DotNetCore</ApplicationInsightsAnnotationResourceId>
<!---->
  </PropertyGroup>
  <ItemGroup>
 <!--Changes to file post adding Application Insights Telemetry:-->
    <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.AspNetCore" Version="2.1.1" />
<!---->
    <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.AspNetCore.All" Version="2.0.8" />
  </ItemGroup>
  <ItemGroup>
    <DotNetCliToolReference Include="Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.CodeGeneration.Tools" Version="2.0.4" />
  </ItemGroup>
<!--Changes to file post adding Application Insights Telemetry:-->
  <ItemGroup>
    <WCFMetadata Include="Connected Services" />
  </ItemGroup>
<!---->
</Project>

Program.cs

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Linq;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Logging;

namespace DotNetCore
{
    public class Program
    {
        public static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            BuildWebHost(args).Run();
        }

        public static IWebHost BuildWebHost(string[] args) =>
            WebHost.CreateDefaultBuilder(args)
// Change to file post adding Application Insights Telemetry:
                .UseApplicationInsights()
//
                .UseStartup<Startup>()
                .Build();
    }
}

Synthetic transactions with PowerShell

To automate requests against your app with synthetic transactions.

1. Run your app by clicking IIS Express

2. Copy the url from the browser address bar. It is in the format http://localhost:{random port number}

   

3. Run the following PowerShell loop to create 100 synthetic transactions against your test app. Modify the port number after localhost: to match the url you copied in the previous step.

   for ($i = 0 ; $i -lt 100; $i++)
   {
    Invoke-WebRequest -uri http://localhost:50984/
   }
   

Open Application Insights Portal

After running the PowerShell from the previous section, launch Application Insights to view the transactions and confirm that data is being collected.

From the Visual Studio menu, select Project > Application Insights > Open Application Insights Portal

Collect Failed Requests, Live Stream, & Page View Load Time

Failed Requests

Technically Failed Requests are being collected, but none have occurred yet. To speed the process along a custom exception can be added to the existing project to simulate a real-world exception. If your app is still running in Visual Studio before proceeding Stop Debugging (Shift+F5)

1. In Solution Explorer > expand Pages > About.cshtml > open About.cshtml.cs.

   

2. Add an Exception under Message= and save the change to the file.

   using System;
   using System.Collections.Generic;
   using System.Linq;
   using System.Threading.Tasks;
   using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.RazorPages;
   
   namespace DotNetCore.Pages
   {
       public class AboutModel : PageModel
       {
           public string Message { get; set; }
   
           public void OnGet()
           {
               Message = "Your application description page.";
               throw new Exception("Test Exception");
           }
       }
   }
   

Live Stream

To access the Live Stream functionality of Application Insights with ASP.NET Core update to the Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.AspNetCore 2.2.0 NuGet packages.

From Visual Studio, select Project > Manage NuGet Packages > Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.AspNetCore > Version 2.2.0 > Update.

Multiple confirmation prompts will occur. Read and accept if you agree with the changes.

Page View Load Time

1. In Visual Studio navigate to Solution Explorer > Pages > two files will need to be modified: Layout.cshtml, and ViewImports.cshtml

2. In _ViewImports.cshtml, add:

   @using Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.AspNetCore
   @inject JavaScriptSnippet snippet
   

3. In _Layout.cshtml add the line below before the </head> tag, but also prior to any other scripts.

   @Html.Raw(snippet.FullScript)
   

Test Failed Requests, Page View Load Time, Live Stream

To test out and confirm that everything is working:

1. Run your app by clicking IIS Express

2. Navigate to the About page to trigger the test exception. (If you are running in Debug mode, you will need to click Continue in Visual Studio for the exception to show up in Application Insights.)

3. Rerun the simulated PowerShell transaction script from earlier (You may need to adjust the port number in the script.)

4. If the Applications Insights Overview is not still open, from Visual Studio menu select Project > Application Insights > Open Application Insights Portal.

   Tip

   If you aren't seeing your new traffic yet, check the Time range and click Refresh.

   

5. Select Live Stream

   

   (If your PowerShell script is still running you should see live metrics, if it has stopped run the script again with Live Stream open.)

App Insights SDK Comparison

The Application Insights product group has been working hard to achieve feature parity between the full .NET Framework SDK and the .Net Core SDK. The 2.2.0 release of the ASP.NET Core SDK for Application Insights has largely closed the feature gap.

To understand more about the differences and tradeoffs between .NET and .NET Core.

Performance Counters in this context refers to server-side performance counters like processor, memory, and disk utilization.

Open-source SDK

Read and contribute to the code

Application Insights search continued

To better understand how Application Insights search works in Visual Studio for an ASP.NET Core 2 project even when an explicit install of the Application Insights NuGet packages haven't happened yet. It can be helpful to examine the Debug Output.

If you search the output for the word insight it will highlight results similar to the following:

'dotnet.exe' (CoreCLR: clrhost): Loaded 'C:\Program Files\dotnet\store\x64\netcoreapp2.0\microsoft.aspnetcore.applicationinsights.hostingstartup\2.0.3\lib\netcoreapp2.0\Microsoft.AspNetCore.ApplicationInsights.HostingStartup.dll'.
'dotnet.exe' (CoreCLR: clrhost): Loaded 'C:\Program Files\dotnet\store\x64\netcoreapp2.0\microsoft.applicationinsights.aspnetcore\2.1.1\lib\netstandard1.6\Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.AspNetCore.dll'.

Application Insights Telemetry (unconfigured): {"name":"Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.Dev.Message","time":"2018-06-03T17:32:38.2796801Z","tags":{"ai.location.ip":"127.0.0.1","ai.operation.name":"DEBUG /","ai.internal.sdkVersion":"aspnet5c:2.1.1","ai.application.ver":"1.0.0.0","ai.cloud.roleInstance":"CONTOSO-SERVER","ai.operation.id":"de85878e-4618b05bad11b5a6","ai.internal.nodeName":"CONTOSO-SERVER","ai.operation.parentId":"|de85878e-4618b05bad11b5a6."},"data":{"baseType":"MessageData","baseData":{"ver":2,"message":"Request starting HTTP/1.1 DEBUG http://localhost:53022/  0","severityLevel":"Information","properties":{"AspNetCoreEnvironment":"Development","Protocol":"HTTP/1.1","CategoryName":"Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting.Internal.WebHost","Host":"localhost:53022","Path":"/","Scheme":"http","ContentLength":"0","DeveloperMode":"true","Method":"DEBUG"}}}}

CoreCLR is loading two assemblies:

• Microsoft.AspNetCore.ApplicationInsights.HostingStartup.dll
• Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.AspNetCore.dll.

And the unconfigured in each instance of Application Insights telemetry indicates that this application isn't associated with an ikey so the data that is generated while your app is running isn't being sent to Azure and is only available for local search and analysis.

Part of how this is possible is that the NuGet package Microsoft.AspNetCore.All takes as a dependency Microsoft.ASPNetCoreApplicationInsights.HostingStartup

Outside of Visual Studio if you were editing a ASP.NET Core project in VSCode or some other editor these assemblies wouldn't automatically load during debug if you haven't explicitly added Application Insights to your project.

However, in Visual Studio this lighting up of local Application Insights features from external assemblies is accomplished via use of the IHostingStartup Interface which dynamically adds Application Insights during debug.

To learn more about enhancing an app from an external assembly in ASP.NET Core with IHostingStartup.

How to disable Application Insights in Visual Studio .NET Core projects

While the automatic light up of Application Insights search functionality can be useful to some, seeing debug telemetry generated when you weren't expecting it can be confusing.

If just disabling telemetry generation is sufficient you can add this code block to the Configure method of your Startup.cs file:

  var configuration = app.ApplicationServices.GetService<Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.Extensibility.TelemetryConfiguration>();
            configuration.DisableTelemetry = true;
            if (env.IsDevelopment())

The CoreCLR will still load Microsoft.AspNetCore.ApplicationInsights.HostingStartup.dll and Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.AspNetCore.dll, but they won't do anything.

If you want to completely disable Application Insights in your Visual Studio .NET Core project, the preferred method is to select Tools > Options > Projects and Solutions > Web Projects > and check the box to disable local Application Insights for ASP.NET Core web projects. This functionality was added in Visual Studio 15.6.

If you are running an earlier version of Visual Studio, and you want to completely remove all assemblies loaded via IHostingStartup you can either add:

.UseSetting(WebHostDefaults.PreventHostingStartupKey, "true")

to Program.cs:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Linq;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Logging;

namespace DotNetCore
{
    public class Program
    {
        public static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            BuildWebHost(args).Run();
        }

        public static IWebHost BuildWebHost(string[] args) =>
            WebHost.CreateDefaultBuilder(args)
                .UseSetting(WebHostDefaults.PreventHostingStartupKey, "true")
                .UseStartup<Startup>()
                .Build();
    }
}

Or alternatively you could add "ASPNETCORE_preventHostingStartup": "True" to launchSettings.json environment variables.

The issue with using either of these methods is it won't just disable Application Insights it will disable anything in Visual Studio that was leveraging the IHostingStartup light up functionality.

Video

Next steps

• Explore Users Flows to understand how users navigate through your app.
• Configure Snapshot Collection to see the state of source code and variables at the moment an exception is thrown.
• Use the API to send your own events and metrics for a more detailed view of your app's performance and usage.
• Availability tests check your app constantly from around the world.