Handling Exceptions in ASP.NET Core with IExceptionHandler

.NET 8 introduces a streamlined approach for global exception handling, making your applications more resilient and easier to maintain. Here’s how it works:

🚀 Efficient Error Handling: The new IExceptionHandler makes managing exceptions cleaner and easier, boosting code maintainability.

🔍 Clear Error Messages: ProblemDetails ensures clients get clear, helpful error messages.

🛠️ Logging: Integrated logging speeds up issue diagnosis. (Adjust your logger to prevent double-logging with DiagnosticsTelemetry.)

Implementation:

• Create & Register: Implement your handler and register it with services.AddExceptionHandler().

• Standardize: Register ProblemDetails for RFC 7807-compliant error responses.

• Configure: Add UseExceptionHandler() early in the pipeline to catch exceptions.

Keep in mind:

• You can enrich the ProblemDetails object with additional information using the Extensions property for even more detailed error reporting.

• Be careful not to disclose sensitive internal information, such as stack traces and exception data, to Web API clients, as this could pose security risks.

Run application

Generate cert and configure local machine

dotnet dev-certs https -ep ${HOME}/.aspnet/https/GlobalExceptionHandler.Api.pfx -p <CREDENTIAL_PLACEHOLDER>
dotnet dev-certs https --trust

Note: The certificate name, in this case GlobalExceptionHandler.Api.pfx must match the project assembly name.

Note: <CREDENTIAL_PLACEHOLDER> is used as a stand-in for a password of your own choosing.

Configure application secrets, for the certificate:

dotnet user-secrets init -p GlobalExceptionHandler.Api/GlobalExceptionHandler.Api.csproj
dotnet user-secrets -p GlobalExceptionHandler.Api/GlobalExceptionHandler.Api.csproj set "Kestrel:Certificates:Development:Password" "<CREDENTIAL_PLACEHOLDER>"

Note: The password must match the password used for the certificate.

Building and running your application

docker compose up --build -d