ASP.NET Core Request & Exception Logging with a Built-In Dashboard

#dotnetcore #aspnetcore #logging #observability

Most ASP.NET Core logging setups tell you that something failed — but not what actually happened during the request lifecycle.

I built AsGuard to provide lightweight request + exception logging with a built-in dashboard and minimal setup.

GitHub Repository:
https://github.com/mahmood-alsarraj/asguard

Why AsGuard?

centralized request + exception visibility
built-in dashboard
minimal setup
easier inspection during debugging
lightweight integration

Feature	Description
🚀 Queue-based persistence	Non-blocking async writes - your API never waits for database
📊 Built-in dashboard	Beautiful Razor UI with dark/light mode and live updates
🔒 Sensitive data masking	`[AsGuardMasked]` attribute + configurable header redaction
📝 Body capture	Request/response bodies with content-type allowlist
🔗 Correlation IDs	Distributed tracing with configurable headers (default: `X-Correlation-ID`)
⚡ Live SSE updates	Real-time push notifications without SignalR
🗄️ Multiple databases	SQL Server, PostgreSQL, SQLite, or In-Memory
📈 Exception analytics	Trends, severity summaries, and configurable alerts
🎯 Host ILogger capture	Automatically captures `ILogger<T>` warnings/errors
🔔 Alerting system	Queue pressure, exception spikes, persistence failures
📡 REST API	Full programmatic access to logs and stats
🧹 Retention policies	Auto-cleanup with configurable intervals

Quick Setup

dotnet add package AsGuard
builder.Services.AddRequestLogging(options =>
{
    options.DatabaseProvider = LoggingDatabaseProvider.Sqlite;
    options.ConnectionString = "Data Source=AsGuard.db";
    options.DashboardRoute = "/request-logs-ui";
    options.DashboardUsername = "admin";
    options.DashboardPassword = "admin123";
    options.EnableExceptionLogging = true;
    options.LogRequestBody = true;
    options.LogResponseBody = true;    
});

var app = builder.Build();

app.UseExceptionHandler("/error");
// After the exception handler
app.UseRequestLogging();