aspnet-core-logging

Description

This repository shows ASP.NET Core 8 logging in action; it also serves as a learning, experimenting and teaching path for .NET, Azure Pipelines and other technologies & tools.

:exclamation: Currently this web API uses JSON web tokens (JWT) for authentication & authorization purposes, but momentarily the mechanism used for generating these tokens has been greatly simplified to the point of being actually naive as my focus is set on other topics; on the other hand, I do intend on providing a more realistic implementation in a not so far away future.

This project has several posts associated with it:

• Structured logging in ASP.NET Core using Serilog and Seq
• Use Docker Compose when running integration tests with Azure Pipelines
• Use Docker when running integration tests with Azure Pipelines
• Build an ASP.NET Core application using Azure Pipelines
• Logging HTTP context in ASP.NET Core

Build

Build Server	Operating System	Status
Azure Pipelines	Linux
Azure Pipelines	macOs
Azure Pipelines	Windows

Code quality

Provider	Badge
Codacy
FOSSA
SonarCloud

Setup local development environment

In order to run this application locally, you need to setup some things first, like: run PostgreSQL and pgAdmin via Docker Compose, create a PostgreSQL database using EF Core database migrations, etc.

Setup local persistence services

This ASP.NET Core web API uses PostgreSQL as persistent storage and pgAdmin as database manager, all running locally via Docker Compose.

Create Docker volumes

These volumes are needed to store data outside the Docker containers running the PostgreSQL databases and their manager.

• Volume used by the local development database

docker volume create --name=aspnet-core-logging-dev_data

• Volume used by the integration tests when run locally

docker volume create --name=aspnet-core-logging-it_data

• Volume used by pgAdmin tool

docker volume create --name=pgadmin_data

• Volume used by Seq tool

docker volume create --name=seq_data

Create .env file

The .env file is used by Docker Compose to avoid storing sensitive data inside docker-compose.yml file. Create a new file named .env inside the folder where you have checked-out this git repository and add the following lines:

# Environment variables used by 'aspnet-core-logging-dev' service
# suppress inspection "UnusedProperty"
DB_DEV_POSTGRES_USER=<DB_DEV_USER>
# suppress inspection "UnusedProperty"
DB_DEV_POSTGRES_PASSWORD=<DB_DEV_PASSWORD>

# Environment variables used by 'aspnet-core-logging-it' service
# suppress inspection "UnusedProperty"
DB_IT_POSTGRES_USER=<DB_IT_USER>
# suppress inspection "UnusedProperty"
DB_IT_POSTGRES_PASSWORD=<DB_IT_PASSWORD>

# Environment variables used by 'pgadmin' service
# suppress inspection "UnusedProperty"
PGADMIN_DEFAULT_EMAIL=<PGADMIN_EMAIL_ADDRESS>
# suppress inspection "UnusedProperty"
PGADMIN_DEFAULT_PASSWORD=<PGADMIN_PASSWORD>

Make sure you replace all of the above <DB_DEV_USER>, <DB_DEV_PASSWORD>, ..., <PGADMIN_PASSWORD> tokens with the appropriate values.

Compose commands

All of the commands below must be run from the folder where you have checked-out this git repository. This folder contains a docker-compose.yml file describing the aforementioned compose services.

Run compose services

# The -d flag instructs Docker Compose to run services in the background
docker compose up -d

Stop compose services

docker compose stop

Start compose services

docker compose start

Display compose service log

# The -f flag instructs Docker Compose to display and follow the log entries of the 'pgadmin' service
docker compose logs -f pgadmin

Destroy compose services

The command below will not delete the Docker volumes!

docker compose down

Setup pgAdmin

Once the services have been started using docker compose up command, pgAdmin UI is ready to be used.

Open pgAdmin UI

Open your browser and navigate to http://localhost:8080. In order to start using pgAdmin, you need to authenticate - use the PGADMIN_DEFAULT_EMAIL and PGADMIN_DEFAULT_PASSWORD properties found in your .env file to login.

Register your local database server

When asked about a PostgreSQL server to register, populate the fields found inside Connection tab as below:

• Host name/address = aspnet-core-logging-dev - the compose service name and not the container name (the Docker Compose networking page is a little bit misleading, as it mentions container name, that's why the services found inside the docker-compose.yml file are named differently than their containers)
• Port = 5432 - the Docker internal port
• Username = the value of the ${DB_DEV_POSTGRES_USER} property from the local .env file
• Password = the value of the ${DB_DEV_POSTGRES_PASSWORD} property from the local .env file

Setup environment variables

Since storing sensitive data inside configuration file put under source control is not a very good idea, the following environment variables must be defined on your local development machine:

The connection strings above use the same username and password pairs find in the local .env file. The port from each connection string represent the host port declared inside the local docker-compose.yml file - see more about ports here.

Setup local development database

In order to run the application locally, you need to have an online PostgreSQL database whose schema is up-to-date. The database will be started using the aforementioned Docker Compose commands, while its schema will be updated via one of the options below.

Option 1: Manually run database migrations

In order to create and update the local development database, you need to install EF Core CLI tools; the reference documentation can be found here. I also recommend reading about database migrations here. All of the commands below should be executed from the folder where you have checked-out this git repository.

• Install dotnet-ef

dotnet tool install dotnet-ef --global

:exclamation: Please restart the terminal after running the above command to ensure the following dotnet ef commands do not fail.

• Update dotnet-ef to latest version, if requested to do so

dotnet tool update dotnet-ef --global

• Add a new database migration

dotnet ef migrations add <MIGRATION_NAME> --startup-project ./Sources/Todo.WebApi --project ./Sources/Todo.Persistence

• List existing database migrations

dotnet ef migrations list --startup-project ./Sources/Todo.WebApi --project ./Sources/Todo.Persistence

• Update database to the last migration

dotnet ef database update --startup-project ./Sources/Todo.WebApi --project ./Sources/Todo.Persistence

• Drop existing database

dotnet ef database drop --startup-project ./Sources/Todo.WebApi --project ./Sources/Todo.Persistence

Option 2: Run database migrations at application startup

Ensure the MigrateDatabase configuration property is set to true. See more about applying EF Core migrations at runtime here.

Inspect log events using Seq

In order to inspect application log events generated via Serilog, navigate to http://localhost:8888, which will open Seq UI.

Inspect traces using Jaeger

In order to inspect application traces, navigate to http://localhost:16686/search, which will open Jaeger UI.
To see Jaeger metrics, navigate to http://localhost:14269/metrics.
To see Jaeger health status, navigate to http://localhost:14269/.