Extend ASP.NET Tracing

Published 31 May 04 09:55 AM | despos

Have you ever desired to have an enhanced trace mechanism in ASP.NET? I don't mean (necessarily) a full listener-based architecture (which doesn't work in ASP.NET--or at least, it never worked for me <g>). I mean the trace output you embed in the page by turning on the Trace attribute in the @Page directive. 

As far as I know (and can foresee) there will be no good news on this in ASP.NET 2.0. My wish list includes:

  • Capture the output to a popup window (or external support)
  • Ability to add new sections (maybe through a provider model à là membership)
  • Ability to collapse/expand displayed sections
  • Ability to select which sections you want to see

Am I missing something important here? 

Comments

# Shannon J Hager said on May 31, 2004 04:39 AM:

I would like the sort to treat the time from start as a number and not a string.

# Jon Galloway said on May 31, 2004 02:52 PM:

Absolutely! The biggest feature I'd like is a "rollover / wrapping" feature, like the NT Event log. I'd like to keep the most recent 25 entries, for instance.

I've been meaning to write some code that hooks into the EndRequest event and keeps a queue of trace items instead of an arraylist. A custom trace listener might be a better idea, though.

# TrackBack said on June 1, 2004 04:16 AM:

ASP.net Tracing in a popup window

# TrackBack said on June 1, 2004 04:19 AM:
# Joseph E Shook said on June 1, 2004 12:37 PM:

I have a project that hooks into the Response Filter. It is online at my blog. http://www.deploymentcentric.com/Blogs/joe/permalink.aspx?guid=5c549203-fa43-434d-84a0-a445a870cdbb
There is a link at the bottom of the blog entry to down load a zip of the project.

Right now I am just spitting out the content to the end of the page. But popups and membership features are also Ideas that I think would be crucial. Also a messaging sytem that would allow a remote trouble shooting console to help customers would be nice. I have used the provider approach, because I think all the tricky work is hooking the filter up and then facilitating the output to a popup or somewhere on the screen, and validating the safeness of the hosted implementors. Anyways read my blog entry above and see if I am not thinking about the same things you are suggesting.

# Oskar Austegard said on June 2, 2004 09:43 AM:

I'd settle for the Trace ouput being part of the HTML document - inside a div - that way I could do with it whatever I pleased through CSS/behaviors.

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