Asp.Net MVC How to log all actions being called

Question

I need to be able to log all actions that are called from my asp.net mvc application. How and what would be the best way to achieve this? Where I log it to whether it be the console or log file doesn't matter.

Answer 1

Credit HeyMega for their answer. Here's an example of an expanded implementation I arrived at in MVC5.

public class LogActionAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute
{

    public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)
    {
        var controller = filterContext.RequestContext.RouteData.Values.ContainsKey("Controller") ? filterContext.RequestContext.RouteData.Values["Controller"].ToString() : null;
        var action = filterContext.RequestContext.RouteData.Values.ContainsKey("Action") ? filterContext.RequestContext.RouteData.Values["Action"].ToString() : null;
        var area = filterContext.RequestContext.RouteData.DataTokens.ContainsKey("Area") ? filterContext.RequestContext.RouteData.DataTokens["Area"].ToString() : null;
        var user = filterContext.RequestContext.HttpContext.User.Identity.GetUserId();

        Task.Run(() => Generic().AreaActionLog(user, area, controller, action));

        base.OnActionExecuting(filterContext);
    }
}

I chose to separate the method doing the actual logging into a separate process, if anything goes wrong with the Database interaction, or the DB interaction takes several seconds, the UI is uninterrupted.

You can then decorate the entire controller with [LogAction] attribute like so.

[LogAction]
public class HomeController : Controller
{
    public ActionResult Index()
    {
        return View();
    }

    public ActionResult Contact()
    {
        return View();
    }
}

Or selectively apply the attribute by decorating individual methods:

public class HomeController : Controller
{
    [LogAction]
    public ActionResult Index_Logs_Things()
    {
        return View();
    }
}

Hope this helps someone.

Answer 2

You could create your own class which inherits from ActionFilterAttribute and then override the OnActionExecuting method.

Example

public class LogActionAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute
{
    public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)
    {

        var controller = filterContext.RequestContext.RouteData.Values["Controller"];
        var action = filterContext.RequestContext.RouteData.Values["Action"];

        //
        // Perform logging here
        //

        base.OnActionExecuting(filterContext);
    }
}

public class HomeController : Controller
{
    [LogAction]
    public ActionResult Index()
    {

        return View();
    }

}

Hope this helps!