Automatic Instrumentation

Propagating a Trace

Sentry SDK provides a custom HTTP handler, SentryHttpMessageHandler. This handler can be used inside HttpClient to automatically propagate traces and create spans to track outgoing requests.

To use it, create an instance of HttpClient by passing an instance of SentryHttpMessageHandler as a constructor parameter:

var httpHandler = new SentryHttpMessageHandler();
var httpClient = new HttpClient(httpHandler);

var response = await httpClient.GetStringAsync("https://example.com");

Upon sending a request to https://example.com, the instrumented HTTP client will:

• Populate the sentry-trace header on the request. This allows peer service to start a transaction by linking it to the current (assuming it's also instrumented with Sentry).
• Start a span named GET https://example.com which will track the corresponding HTTP operation on the current transaction.

Additionally, SentryHttpMessageHandler also inherits from DelegatingHandler which allows you to chain it together with other handlers. For example:

var innerHttpHandler = new HttpClientHandler();
var sentryHttpHandler = new SentryHttpMessageHandler(innerHttpHandler);
var httpClient = new HttpClient(sentryHttpHandler);

DiagnosticSource Integration

Starting with version 3.9.0, the SDK automatically integrates with Entity Framework Core and SQLClient whenever available. Those integrations are automatically activated if your project matches one of the following conditions:

• Includes Sentry.AspNet 3.9.0 or higher
• Includes Sentry.AspNetCore 3.9.0 or higher
• Includes Sentry 3.9.0 and targets .NET Core 3.0 or higher (for example, .NET 5)

If you don't want to have this integration, you can disable it on SentryOptions by calling DisableDiagnosticSourceIntegration();

option.DisableDiagnosticSourceIntegration();

If your project doesn't match any of the conditions above, (for example, it targets .NET Framework 4.6.1 and uses only the Sentry package), you can still manually activate those instrumentations by including the package Sentry.DiagnosticSource and enabling it during on the SDK's initialization.

// Requires NuGet package: Sentry.DiagnosticSource
option.AddDiagnosticSourceIntegration();

Entity Framework Core Integration

This integration is part of the DiagnosticSource integration and will automatically create spans for EF Core queries for the following operations:

Query compiling

Occurs when EF Core optimizes a query. It then caches it so that future queries with the same input get reused. The parameters for this span are:

• Operation: db.query_compiler

• Description: The query to be compiled

Database connection

Represents the lifecycle of a database connection. One connection may contain one or more query execution spans, and, in some circumstances, may not be registered, due to the nature of the EF Core event model. The parameters for this span are:

• Operation: db.connection

Query Execution

Happens during the execution of a query. It represents how long a query took to be executed The parameters for this span are:

• Operation: db.query

• Description: The query to be executed.

SQLClient Integration

This integration is part of the DiagnosticSource integration and will automatically create spans for SQLClient operations, the integrated operations are:

Database connection

Represents the lifecycle of a database connection. One connection may contain one or more query execution spans. The parameters for this span are:

• Operation: db.connection

• db.connection_id: The Connection ID from the connection.

• db.operation_id: The Operation ID from the connection.

• rows_sent: The number of rows sent during the connection.

• bytes_received: The amount of data (in bytes) received during the connection.

• bytes_sent: The amount of data (in bytes) sent during the connection.

Query Execution

Happens during the execution of a query. It represents how long a query took to be executed. The parameters for this span are:

• Operation: db.query

• Description: The query to be executed.

• db.operation_id: The Operation ID from the connection.