Application Insights Tracer

This library is a custom tracer that wraps the Application Insights TelemetryClient class.

public static void Main(string[] args)
{
    IAITracer aiTracer = AITracerFactory.CreateAITracer();
    aiTracer.TraceInformation("This is a informational test trace");
    aiTracer.TrackCustomEvent("Custom Event Name");
}

See here for more info about using of the Application Insights Telemetry Client.

Installation

You can obtain it through Nuget with:

Install-Package ApplicationInsightsTracer

Or clone this repo and reference it.

Initialization

You can create a new AITracer object via the AITracerFactory.

IAITracer aiTracer = AITracerFactory.CreateAITracer();

This default mode uses the active TelemetryConfiguration and takes the Instrumentation Key from the APPINSIGHTS_INSTRUMENTATIONKEY app.settings value.

You can also create a new TelemetryConfiguration from the Applciation Insights SDK and pass it as a parameter:

TelemetryConfiguration config = TelemetryConfiguration.CreateDefault();
config.InstrumentationKey = "MyIkey";
var aiTracer = AITracerFactory.CreateAITracer(telemetryConfiguration: config);

Usage

The AITracer object implements an interface for sending tracers and telemetry messages to Application Insights endpoint.

A full example with different telemetry options:

public static void ExampleWithDifferentTelemetryTypes()
{
    IAITracer aiTracer = AITracerFactory.CreateAITracer();

    // Simple trace
    aiTracer.TraceInformation("Demo informational trace");

    try
    {
        aiTracer.TrackCustomEvent($"Demo Custom Event");
        throw new Exception("Demoing Failure");
    }
    catch (Exception e)
    {
        // Report the exception to see full exception details in the Application Insights portal (including full Stack Trace)
        aiTracer.ReportException(e);
    }

    // send a custom metric value 
    aiTracer.TrackCustomMetric("Demo metric", 42);

    // Remeber to flush the telemetry buffer before ending the process
    aiTracer.Flush();
}

A full example with wraping telemetry with the Applciation Insights Operation Handleing:

public static void FullExampleWithOperation()
{
    IAITracer aiTracer = AITracerFactory.CreateAITracer();

    // Add a custom property to all traces
    aiTracer.AddCustomProperty("RunMode", "Demo");

    // Simple trace
    aiTracer.TraceInformation("First informational trace");

    int runIndex = 0;
    while (runIndex < 10)
    {
        // Create custom property for the operation that will be added to all traces in the operation
        var operationProperties = new Dictionary<string, string> { {"RunVersion", $"Run {runIndex}"} };

        // Create a operation to wrap all the current trigger telemetry under a single group.
        // It is disposable, so it will be dispatched by itself
        using (aiTracer.StartOperation("Demo Operation", operationProperties))
        {
            try
            {
                aiTracer.TrackCustomEvent($"Demo Custom Event");

                // Throw exception sometimes
                if (runIndex % 5 == 0)
                {
                    throw new Exception("Demoing Failure");
                }

            }
            catch (Exception e)
            {
                // Report the exception to see full exception details in the Application Insights portal (including full Stack Trace)
                aiTracer.ReportException(e);

                // Mark the operation as failure to see it in failed requests section
                aiTracer.MarkOperationAsFailure();
            }
        }

        runIndex++;
    }

    // send a custom metric value with the number of runs
    aiTracer.TrackCustomMetric("Total Number of Runs", runIndex);

    // Remeber to flush the telemetry buffer before ending the process
    aiTracer.Flush();
}

You can see more examples in the DemoApplciation project in the repository.

Notes

License

MIT