Azure AppInsights end to end correlation - azure

Question

I am looking into Azure AppInsights for my telemetry correlation requirement. I have created 3 simple APIs that call one another in succession as below:
First Api -----> Middle Api -----> Another Api
The Api calls are made using Typed HttpClient through a simple service class. All the Api projects have Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.AspNetCore and Microsoft.Extensions.Logging.ApplicationInsights NuGets references added. I have program and service classes for all the APIs as below:
Program.cs
using Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.Channel;
using Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.WindowsServer.TelemetryChannel;
var builder = WebApplication.CreateBuilder(args);
builder.Services.AddControllers();
...
//App Insights
builder.Services.AddSingleton(typeof(ITelemetryChannel),
new ServerTelemetryChannel() { StorageFolder = "/tmp/myfolder" });
builder.Services.AddApplicationInsightsTelemetry();
builder.Services.AddSingleton<IConfiguration>(builder.Configuration);
builder.Services.AddScoped<IWeatherService, DummyWeatherService>();
builder.Services.AddHttpClient<IWeatherService, DummyWeatherService>();
var app = builder.Build();
...
app.Run();
Service
using System.Net.Http.Headers;
using AppInsightsDemo.Api.Models;
namespace AppInsightsDemo.Api.Services;
public class DummyWeatherService : IWeatherService
{
private readonly IConfiguration _configuration;
private readonly HttpClient _httpClient;
public DummyWeatherService(
IConfiguration configuration,
HttpClient httpClient)
{
_configuration = configuration;
_httpClient = httpClient;
_httpClient.BaseAddress = GetMiddleApiBaseUri();
_httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Accept.Clear();
_httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Accept.Add(
new MediaTypeWithQualityHeaderValue("application/json"));
}
private Uri GetAnotherApiBaseUri()
{
var configurationSection = _configuration.GetRequiredSection("Dependencies");
var baseUri = configurationSection.GetValue<string>("MiddleApiUri")
?? throw new ArgumentException("Another Api base uri is empty");
return new Uri(baseUri);
}
public async Task<Weather?> GetWeatherAsync()
{
Weather? weather = null;
var response = await _httpClient.GetAsync("middle");
if (response.IsSuccessStatusCode)
{
weather = await response.Content.ReadAsAsync<Weather>();
}
return weather;
}
}
This is what I end up with in AppInsights sample. The third API event has the same operation id as the first two Api events have but the third event has a different parent id. I expect the third event to have the id of my middle (second) api event (localhost://7290) as its parent id and the three events show up accordingly in a hierarchy.
Can anyone please advise if I am missing some configuration or not using this SDK right? Thank you

Answer 1

This is rather silly of me. I configured the ApplicationInsights connection string for my first api(:7176) and last api(:7206) but missed to configure it for my middle api (:7290) though I have added ApplicationInsights service to all Api projects. It took me a while to figure out the missing connection string. Now I get a nice dependency hierarchy as below:
I guess a connection string validation might come handy. Sorry for the trouble. Thanks.