Setup guide for ASP.NET Core

This setup guide is for v1 of the .NET SDK (currently in beta).

This page guides you through the setup of the Apitally SDK for your ASP.NET Core application. If you don’t have an Apitally account yet, sign up before getting started. Once you’re done with this guide, you will be able to:

Get detailed metrics on API usage, errors, and performance
Track API adoption and usage by individual consumers
Log individual API requests, responses, and correlated application logs
See what’s causing slow API requests with traces
Monitor uptime and set up custom alerts

Requirements

Requires .NET 8+ and ASP.NET Core 8.x, 9.x, or 10.x.

Create app

To get started, create a new app in the Apitally dashboard and select ASP.NET Core as your framework. Create app

You can also configure the environments (e.g. prod and dev) for your app, or simply accept the defaults. After submitting, you will see tailored setup instructions for your app. These include your write token and code snippets you can copy and paste into your project.

The write token (apt_...) provided in the setup instructions uniquely identifies your app for the purpose of data ingestion only. It does not grant any kind of read access to your data.

Install the SDK

Install the Apitally SDK as a dependency in your project.

dotnet add package Apitally --prerelease

Initialize Apitally

Call AddApitally with the write token and other configuration options when registering services in your Program.cs file. You can also configure Apitally in your appsettings.json file.

using Apitally;

var builder = WebApplication.CreateBuilder(args);

builder.Services.AddApitally(options =>
{
    options.WriteToken = "your-write-token";
});

var app = builder.Build();

{
  "Apitally": {
    "WriteToken": "your-write-token"
  }
}

If your application uses a Startup class, call services.AddApitally() in ConfigureServices. The SDK uses the ASP.NET Core environment name (e.g. from ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT) to determine the environment in Apitally. Production maps to prod and Development maps to dev, matching the default environments of your app. To use a different environment name, set the Env option or the APITALLY_ENV environment variable. You can also set the APITALLY_WRITE_TOKEN environment variable instead of configuring WriteToken. Deploy your application with these changes, or restart it if you’re testing locally.

The basic setup is now complete. Metrics and logs will start appearing in the Apitally dashboard.

Identify consumers

Consumers are the users or applications calling your API. Identifying them lets you analyze and filter API traffic by consumer in Apitally. Call SetConsumer on the IApitally service during request handling to associate the current request with a consumer identifier. You can call it wherever the consumer is known, such as in a Minimal API handler, a controller action, existing middleware, or authentication code. You can also provide a display name, group, and custom attributes for each consumer.

using System.Security.Claims;
using Apitally;

app.Use(async (context, next) =>
{
    var user = context.User;
    if (user.Identity?.IsAuthenticated == true)
    {
        var apitally = context.RequestServices.GetRequiredService<IApitally>();
        apitally.SetConsumer(
            user.Identity.Name!,
            name: user.FindFirstValue(ClaimTypes.GivenName), // optional
            group: user.FindFirstValue(ClaimTypes.Role), // optional
            attributes: new Dictionary<string, string?> { ["plan"] = user.FindFirstValue("plan") } // optional
        );
    }
    await next();
});

using System.Security.Claims;
using Apitally;

app.MapGet("/items", (ClaimsPrincipal user, IApitally apitally) =>
{
    if (user.Identity?.IsAuthenticated == true)
    {
        apitally.SetConsumer(
            user.Identity.Name!,
            name: user.FindFirstValue(ClaimTypes.GivenName), // optional
            group: user.FindFirstValue(ClaimTypes.Role), // optional
            attributes: new Dictionary<string, string?> { ["plan"] = user.FindFirstValue("plan") } // optional
        );
    }
    return new[] { "item1" };
});

using System.Security.Claims;
using Apitally;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc;

[ApiController]
[Route("items")]
public class ItemsController(IApitally apitally) : ControllerBase
{
    [HttpGet]
    public IEnumerable<string> GetItems()
    {
        if (User.Identity?.IsAuthenticated == true)
        {
            apitally.SetConsumer(
                User.Identity.Name!,
                name: User.FindFirstValue(ClaimTypes.GivenName), // optional
                group: User.FindFirstValue(ClaimTypes.Role), // optional
                attributes: new Dictionary<string, string?> { ["plan"] = User.FindFirstValue("plan") } // optional
            );
        }
        return ["item1"];
    }
}

Capture headers and bodies

Only response headers are captured by default. You can opt in to capture request headers as well as request and response bodies when initializing Apitally.

builder.Services.AddApitally(options =>
{
    options.WriteToken = "your-write-token";
    options.CaptureRequestHeaders = true;
    options.CaptureRequestBody = true;
    options.CaptureResponseBody = true;
});

Mask sensitive information

The SDK automatically masks common sensitive query parameters, headers, and body fields. To mask additional data, pass regular expressions matching query parameter names, header names, or body field names to MaskQueryParams, MaskHeaders, or MaskBodyFields, respectively. Matching is case-insensitive.

builder.Services.AddApitally(options =>
{
    options.WriteToken = "your-write-token";
    options.MaskQueryParams = ["^account_id$"];
    options.MaskHeaders = ["^X-Custom-Key$"];
    options.MaskBodyFields = ["^credit_card$"];
});

You can use the MaskRequestBody and MaskResponseBody callbacks to mask individual fields or entire bodies using custom logic. Use MaskLogRecord to mask or drop application log records. More information about masking is available here.

Sample requests

If your application receives a lot of traffic, you may want to sample requests to stay within your request logs quota. Metrics will continue to count every request regardless of sampling. Use SampleRate to capture logs and traces for a fraction of requests.

builder.Services.AddApitally(options =>
{
    options.WriteToken = "your-write-token";
    options.SampleRate = 0.1; // capture logs and traces for 10% of requests
});

You can also use the SampleOnRequest and SampleOnResponse callbacks to make sampling decisions using custom logic. More information about sampling is available here.

Instrument third-party libraries

Instrumenting third-party libraries adds details about database queries, HTTP calls to external services, and other operations to your request traces. This lets you see how these operations contribute to API response times. HttpClient and many other libraries, such as Npgsql, are traced automatically. Other libraries require OpenTelemetry instrumentation packages. For example, to trace database queries made with Microsoft.Data.SqlClient, install OpenTelemetry.Extensions.Hosting and OpenTelemetry.Instrumentation.SqlClient:

dotnet add package OpenTelemetry.Extensions.Hosting
dotnet add package OpenTelemetry.Instrumentation.SqlClient

Then register the instrumentation in your Program.cs file:

Program.cs

builder.Services.AddApitally(options =>
{
    options.WriteToken = "your-write-token";
});

builder.Services.AddOpenTelemetry().WithTracing(tracing => tracing
    .AddSqlClientInstrumentation()
    .AddHttpClientInstrumentation()
    .AddSource("*") // all other activity sources
);

Apitally adds its span processor to the tracer provider automatically, so you don’t need to configure an exporter. More information about tracing and instrumenting third-party libraries is available here.

SDK reference

Setup guides

Setup guide for ASP.NET Core

Requirements

Create app

Install the SDK

Initialize Apitally

Identify consumers

Capture headers and bodies

Mask sensitive information

Sample requests

Instrument third-party libraries

​Requirements

​Create app

​Install the SDK

​Initialize Apitally

​Identify consumers

​Capture headers and bodies

​Mask sensitive information

​Sample requests

​Instrument third-party libraries

Requirements

Create app

Install the SDK

Initialize Apitally

Identify consumers

Capture headers and bodies

Mask sensitive information

Sample requests

Instrument third-party libraries