StackExchange.Exceptional

StackExchange.Exceptional is the error handler used internally by Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow for logging to SQL (SQL Server and MySQL are both supported).

It also supports JSON and memory error stores, filtering of exceptions before logging, and fail/retry mechanisms for storing errors if there’s an interruption in connecting to the error store.

Configuration

• ASP.NET
  • Getting started with ASP.NET (non-Core)
  • Getting started with ASP.NET Core
• Other .NET (eg: console application)
  • Getting started with .NET (non-Core) for a console app
  • Getting started with .NET Core for a console app

Details

While having some features centered around logging/showing exceptions from web applications, it can be used with either web or console applications. HttpContext is optional when logging exceptions. An example use of this at Stack Exchange is windows services logging to SQL and viewed elsewhere in a central dashboard called Opserver.

This project was inspired by ELMAH, but it didn’t suit our particular needs for very, very high volume error logging when a network-level event occurs.

Stack Exchange needed a handful things in an error handler/logger:

• High speed/capacity logging (on the order of 100,000/min)
• Handling the connection to a central error store being interrupted (without losing the errors)
• Add custom data to exceptions
• Rolling up of duplicate errors

Given the above needs, StackExchange.Exceptional was created. It’s as lightweight as possible to suit the needs of the network, but if there are compelling features I’ll definitely look at adding them to the main repo here and NuGet soon.

Here are some examples of what Exceptional looks like.

Error listing:

Error Detail:

You can quickly add these routes to ASP.NET (non-Core) or ASP.NET Core.

License

Dual-licensed under:

• Apache License, Version 2.0, (LICENSE-APACHE or https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
• MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)