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Revisiting improved HTTP logging in ASP.NET Core 8

A few years ago, I had a play with HTTP logging added in ASP.NET Core 6. ASP.NET Core 8 introduced a set of additional configuration options that I believe are essential to make this feature usable. I will recap the details from the previous post below, but for more context, the first part of this series is here. In this post, I'll go through some of the changes introduced in HTTP logging since last. Before I jump into the improvements, let's recap how to set up HTTP logging.

Boosting Code Readability and Manageability in ASP.NET Core

In Software development, code readability transforms complexity into clarity. Martin Fowler said: Code should be readable and manageable so other developers can understand and work without additional fatigue. .NET has many ways to enhance readability and manageability. This post will explore C#'s extension methods by listing five use cases that I use on all of the ASP.NET Core projects I'm working on.

Caching Strategies in ASP.NET Core

Decreasing response time is one of the key measures towards improving the user experience of an application. Caching techniques and other practices can help your.NET application perform well with low effort. With caching, you can keep frequently accessed delay-prone data in a fast, accessible location. This can improve your application's performance remarkably without making a big effort. In this post, I'll introduce a few different ways of implementing caching in ASP.NET Core.

Understanding .NET stack traces - A guide for developers

Stack traces are important for debugging and understanding exceptions in.NET applications. They provide detailed information about the error and the call stack when an exception occurs, allowing us as developers to investigate why an error happened. In this post, I'll walk you through the basics of reading.NET stack traces and explore more advanced scenarios, including how multiple types of stack traces can be combined.

Lessons learned after migrating Azure Functions to Isolated Functions on .NET 8

The In-process model of running Azure Functions is being retired in favor of the Isolated model in two years. A lot of components on elmah.io are running on Azure Functions. To ensure we are running on the most modern and supported platform (also in two years), we have spent quite some time migrating from In-process to Isolated functions. In this post, I'll share both a checklist to help you do the same as well as some of the lessons learned we had during the migration.

"Secret" elmah.io features #5 - Breadcrumbs leading up to errors

It's time for a new post in the series about "secret" elmah.io features. This is the series where I highlight features that some of you may already know while others don't. For today's post, I want to highlight a feature that turns 3 years old this week: Breadcrumbs. Breadcrumbs is a built-in feature in all of our client integrations and the UI. Debugging what went wrong is often a lot easier by providing a logged error with a list of breadcrumbs leading up to an error.

HTTP Error 500.19 - Internal Server Error

I was just asked how to troubleshoot an HTTP Error 500.19 - Internal Server Error when trying to launch an ASP.NET Core website on IIS. I have seen this error too many times for both ASP.NET and ASP.NET Core so decided to write a blog post about at least one, obvious, fix. The problem happens when deploying the ASP.NET or ASP.NET Core website to IIS and getting the following error message in the browser.

"Secret" elmah.io features #4 - Get help from AI and ChatGPT

In this fourth post in the series of "secret" elmah.io features, I want to introduce you to one of several AI features available on elmah.io. We have had machine learning features like automatic bot detection and spike identification for years. But a recent addition to the portfolio of AI features is the integration with ChatGPT to get help solving issues. In this post, I'll show you how to set it up and how it works.

"Secret" elmah.io features #3 - Automate tasks with elmah.io CLI

In this third post in the series of "secret" elmah.io features, I want to introduce you to the elmah.io Command Line Interface (CLI). While you probably spend most of your elmah.io-related time inside the UI, the CLI offers some interesting possibilities not available through the web app. In this post, I'll show what I believe are the two most usable and helpful features of the elmah.io CLI. There are a lot of sub-commands so feel free to play around with it.