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Antonio Falcão Jr.
Antonio Falcão Jr.

Posted on • Edited on

[Quick Tip] Dump the configuration easily and improve the developer experience.

#dotnet

Always knowing the state of the application is a sign that the system is under control, but sometimes this is not trivial.

Depending on the environment, it is not a simple task to access the application settings, and making this information available in the wrong location can expose vulnerabilities.

With this simple approach is possible to define a complete and safely dump for configuration settings.

Route approache

Create an IEndpointRouteBuilder extensions method to encapsulate details and guarantee the right environment:

public static class EndpointRouteBuilderExtensions { public static void MapDumpConfig(this IEndpointRouteBuilder endpoints, string pattern, IConfigurationRoot configurationRoot, bool isProduction) { if (isProduction) return; endpoints.MapGet( pattern: pattern, requestDelegate: context => context.Response.WriteAsync( text: configurationRoot.GetDebugView(), cancellationToken: context.RequestAborted)); } }
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As we can see, if the environment is the Production one, the configuration will be skipped.

Now, specify the middleware configuration details in Startup.cs, Adding a RouteEndpoint to the IEndpointRouteBuilder with /dump-config pattern:

public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app) { app.UseEndpoints( endpoints => { endpoints.MapDumpConfig( pattern: "/dump-config", configurationRoot: _configuration as IConfigurationRoot, isProduction: _env.IsProduction()); } }
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The resource will respond in http://localhost/dump-config.

Log approache

If prefer, is it possible to deliver the dump for a log service. In this case, is not necessary the skip statement:

public static void MapDumpConfig(this IEndpointRouteBuilder endpoints, string pattern, IConfigurationRoot configurationRoot, ILogger logger) { endpoints.MapGet( pattern: pattern, requestDelegate: context => { logger.LogInformation("{Settings}", configurationRoot.GetDebugView()); return context.Response.WriteAsync( text: "Configuration dumped successfully.", cancellationToken: context.RequestAborted); }); }
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And then, propagate the log resource:

public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app , ILoggerFactory loggerFactory) { app.UseEndpoints( endpoints => { endpoints.MapDumpConfig( pattern: "/dump-config", configurationRoot: _configuration as IConfigurationRoot, logger: loggerFactory.CreateLogger<Startup>()); } }
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Multiple strategy approache 

public static void MapDumpConfig(this IEndpointRouteBuilder endpoints, string pattern, IConfigurationRoot configurationRoot, bool isProduction, ILogger logger) { endpoints.MapGet( pattern: pattern, requestDelegate: context => isProduction ? DumpToLogAsync(context) : DumpToResponseAsync(context)); Task DumpToResponseAsync(HttpContext context) => context.Response.WriteAsync( text: configurationRoot.GetDebugView(), cancellationToken: context.RequestAborted); Task DumpToLogAsync(HttpContext context) { logger.LogInformation("{Settings}", configurationRoot.GetDebugView()); return context.Response.WriteAsync( text: "Configuration dumped successfully", cancellationToken: context.RequestAborted); } }
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Conclusion

In this way, we can improve the developer experience given a simple way to check the actual state of the system.

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