How can I log the request and response body?

[VictorioBerra]

Can this be done with UseSerilogRequestLogging()?

[nblumhardt]

Hi Victorio,

UseSerilogRequestLogging() doesn't do anything special to enable this; it's not a straightforward thing to do, and has some caveats (buffering and so on). Check out https://exceptionnotfound.net/using-middleware-to-log-requests-and-responses-in-asp-net-core/ for the kind of thing that's required (though I'd recommend avoiding this if at all possible).

Hope this helps,
Nick

[VictorioBerra]

Thanks for the quick reply.

When you say:

(though I'd recommend avoiding this if at all possible)

Do you mean logging the request/response body entirely? What about for auditing purposes?

Audit.NET.WebAPI seems to be able to do this, but unfortunately their sinks are very limited compared to Serilog. I would have to Sink them to a database table most likely.

[nblumhardt]

I think that's the essence of the "if at all possible" :-) .. If you're stuck having to audit them, you might have to take the performance hit.

It's not that it's impossible, though - using something like the approach in the link should work, with a sprinkling of log statements in there.

I don't think we'd take on maintaining this kind of thing as part of Serilog - too many corner cases (e.g. giant request/response payloads, dropped connections, ...) to deal with.

[VictorioBerra]

Yeah, some of those edge cases crossed my mind. The client wants to be able to debug response issues by seeing the requests. I think maybe I could just log better manually and log out some of the more important requests.

[nblumhardt]

Sounds like a plan :-) - good luck with it!