Exception Tracking
Exception Tracking is an Instrumentation feature that allows an injected application to report when unhandled exceptions occur.
Exception Tracking can be configured at the method level to detect unhandled exceptions that occur within the method and at the assembly level to detect unhandled exceptions that occur anywhere in the assembly.
Note: Dotfuscator Professional also allows you to track exceptions caught by your application and exceptions thrown by your application.
Configuration
To track exceptions:
Using either in-code attributes or extended attributes, add
ExceptionTrackAttribute
s to appropriate assemblies and methods.Configure the properties of these attributes appropriately.
Build your Dotfuscator config.
The output assemblies will now contain injected code for Exception Tracking.
Supported Application Types
Exception Tracking can be used on methods within all assemblies supported by instrumentation. Exception Tracking can also be used on those assemblies themselves except for the following cases:
- Non-package
.dll
assemblies (this restriction does not exist in Dotfuscator Professional) - XNA assemblies
Note that if you are injecting the Generic Exception Dialog, then additional restrictions apply.
Report Info
When an exception occurs, it may be helpful for the user to provide additional information, such as what scenario triggered the error. Additionally, the user may consent to sending an exception report even if they previously opted-out of telemetry. You can have your application provide this information, or you can have the injected code ask the user for the information.
Application-Provided
This information is communicated via a source defined with the ExceptionTrackAttribute
called ReportInfoSource.
The source defines either an IDictionary
or an IDictionary<string,string>
.
There are three keys that the injected code will look up in this dictionary:
"consent"
: value is the string"true"
or"false"
, indicating whether the user opted-in to transmitting this exception report.If
"true"
, the exception report will always be sent, even if the user opted-out of telemetry.If
"false"
(or any other string), the exception report will never be sent, even if the user opted-in to telemetry.If not specified, the general telemetry opt-in preference will be honored.
"comment"
: value is a user-provided comment about what the application was doing when the exception occurred.- If specified, this information will be included in the fault message.
"contact"
: value is an unstructured, user-provided piece of contact information.- If specified, this information will be included in the fault message.
Collecting user-specified report information is optional. If using this application-provided report information strategy, you can choose to populate any or all of these values without actually soliciting the information from the application's user.
Generic Exception Dialog
Dotfuscator can have the injected code ask the user for information, instead of calling out to application code.
To do this, on the ExceptionTrackAttribute
's ReportInfoSourceElement property, choose the "DefaultAction" value.
Behavior
This dialog will use the following information, if provided:
- The name of the application from
ApplicationAttribute
's Name property. - The name of the company from
BusinessAttribute
's CompanyName property. - The privacy policy URI from the
ExceptionTrackAttribute
's PrivacyPolicyUri property.
The user can provide additional details (the comment and contact information) by clicking the Add Details button. If they click the Send Error Report button, the report will be sent. If they close the dialog in any other way, the report will not be sent. The general telemetry opt-in preference will be ignored in all cases.
Dialog-compatible Application Types
The generic exception dialog can be used on assemblies supported by Exception Tracking, and methods within those assemblies, except for the following:
- .NET Compact Framework assemblies
- Windows Phone assemblies
- Universal Windows Platform (UWP) assemblies
The assembly must target version 1.1 (or higher) of the .NET Framework or Silverlight version 2 (or higher).
Additionally, in a Silverlight assembly, the generic exception dialog can only be used for assembly-level Exception Tracking; it cannot be used for method-level tracking.
When using the built-in dialog on the .NET Framework, the dialog will be constructed and displayed using the Windows Forms API. This may have unintended consequences for console or service applications; it may be preferable to use application-provided report information in these situations. If the assembly does not already reference the appropriate Windows Forms libraries, references will be added.
Messages
Exception Tracking only generates one type of message: Fault.
Fault
Generated when an unhandled exception is detected in the assembly or method annotated with an ExceptionTrackAttribute
and the user consents to it being sent.
Includes the following data:
- Session ID
- Timestamp
- Exception type
- Exception message
- Exception stack trace
- List of loaded assemblies
- Comment and contact information, if provided