Context providers are used to automatically attach information to each error report. The information is useful to determine why an exception have been thrown.

To create a provider you need to create a class which implements the context provider interface. In the .NET standard library the interface is named IContextCollectionProvider.

Then register the provider using Err.Configuration.ContextProviders.Add(new YourProvider());.

.NET Standard example

Here is a sample for .NET Core MVC:

public class SampleProvider : IContextCollectionProvider
{
    /// <inheritdoc />
    public ContextCollectionDTO Collect(IErrorReporterContext context)
    {
        if (!(context is MvcCoreErrorContext aspNetContext) || aspNetContext.ViewBag == null)
            return null;

        var properties = new Dictionary<string,string>();
        properties["CurrentUser"] = Thread.CurrentPrincipal.Identity.Name;
        properties["ErrTags"] = "fatal";

        return new ContextInfoCollection(Name, properties);
    }

    /// <inheritdoc />
    public string Name => "MyData";
}

There is also a helper class which can convert .NET objects into context collections:

public class ViewBagProvider : IContextCollectionProvider
{
    /// <inheritdoc />
    public ContextCollectionDTO Collect(IErrorReporterContext context)
    {
        if (!(context is MvcCoreErrorContext aspNetContext) || aspNetContext.ViewBag == null)
            return null;

        var converter = new ObjectToContextCollectionConverter();
        return converter.Convert(Name, aspNetContext.ViewBag);
    }

    /// <inheritdoc />
    public string Name => "ViewBag";
}

Getting information from the .NET library

In most cases you need to be able to get information from your favorite .NET framework/library. For that Coderr provides a context that you can use to extract information.

The context is different for each Coderr client library. Here is a list of all available contexts.

Client name	URL
Base library	if (context is ErrorReporterContext errorContext) ....
ASPNET	if (context is HttpErrorReporterContext httpContext) ....
ASPNET MVC5	if (context is AspNetMvcContext aspNetContext) ....
ASPNET Core	if (context is MvcCoreErrorContext mvcContext) ....
WPF	if (context is WpfErrorReporter wpfContext) ....
WinForms	if (context is WinformsErrorReportContext winFormsContext) ....

The if is required if you are using multiple libraries in your application, since errors will then run through different Coderr pipelines.

Conventions

A couple of conventions which can be used within your collector.

Exceptions during collection

A context info provider MUST not throw exceptions. Therefore you need to have a catch all which wraps your logic. You can however include the exception within your context collection to be able to analyze the exception in our UI.

var properties = new Dictionary<string,string>();
try
{
    properties["CurrentUser"] = Thread.CurrentPrincipal.Identity.Name;
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
    properties["CurrentUser.Error"] = ex.ToString();
}
return new ContextInfoCollection("YourCollectionName", properties);

Adding tags

You can add tags to error reports by using a context collection property named ErrTags:

var properties = new Dictionary<string,string>();
try
{
    properties["CurrentUser"] = Thread.CurrentPrincipal.Identity.Name;
    properties["ErrTags"] = "fatal";
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
    properties["CurrentUser.Error"] = ex.ToString();
}

return new ContextInfoCollection("YourCollectionName", properties);