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Generate compliance reports for an annotated cloud-native app

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Compliance departments need to be able to review code and compliance reports to ensure that the application is compliant with the company's policies. The .NET compliance framework provides a way to generate reports that show the compliance status of the application.

What is a compliance report?

A compliance report can be generated at compile time. The .NET compliance framework generates a JSON file that contains details on the data classifications and redaction methods used in the application.

{
    "Name": "DataEntities",
    "Types": [
        {
            "Name": "DataEntities.Order",
            "Members": [
                {
                    "Name": "CustomerAddress",
                    "Type": "string",
                    "File": "C:\\Developer\\mslearn-dotnet-cloudnative\\dotnet-compliance\\eShopLite\\DataEntities\\Order.cs",
                    "Line": "25",
                    "Classifications": [
                        {
                            "Name": "EUIIData"
                        }
                    ]
                },
                {
                    "Name": "CustomerName",
                    "Type": "string",
                    "File": "C:\\Developer\\mslearn-dotnet-cloudnative\\dotnet-compliance\\eShopLite\\DataEntities\\Order.cs",
                    "Line": "21",
                    "Classifications": [
                        {
                            "Name": "EUIIData"
                        }
                    ]
                },
    ...

The report above is an example from the eShopLite.DataEntities project. It shows that the Order class has two properties that are classified as EUIIData.

{
    "Name": "Store",
    "Types": [
        {
            "Name": "Store.Services.Log",
            "Logging Methods": [
                {
                    "Name": "LogOrders",
                    "Parameters": [
                        {
                            "Name": "logger",
                            "Type": "Microsoft.Extensions.Logging.ILogger",
                            "File": "C:\\Developer\\mslearn-dotnet-cloudnative\\dotnet-compliance\\eShopLite\\Store\\Services\\ProductService.cs",
                            "Line": "103"
                        },
                        {
                            "Name": "order",
                            "Type": "DataEntities.Order",
                            "File": "C:\\Developer\\mslearn-dotnet-cloudnative\\dotnet-compliance\\eShopLite\\Store\\Services\\ProductService.cs",
                            "Line": "103"
                        }
                    ]
                }
            ]
        }
    ]
}

The report above is an example from the eShopLite.Store project. It shows that the LogOrders method in the ProductService class takes an Order object as a parameter for logging.

How to generate a compliance report

There are two steps that you need to take for each project you'd like to generate a report for:

1. Add the Microsoft.Extensions.AuditReports NuGet package to each project.

2. Add two entries into the PropertyGroup section of the csproj project file:

   <GenerateComplianceReport>true</GenerateComplianceReport>
   <ComplianceReportOutputPath>$(MSBuildThisFileDirectory)\path to folder location</ComplianceReportOutputPath>
   

   The first switches the compliance report generation on. The second specifies the path to the folder where the report will be generated. The file name is ComplianceReport.json.

With these updates, running dotnet build in the solution folder generates a compliance report for each project that has the GenerateComplianceReport property set to true.

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