How do I make CloudConfigurationManager.GetSetting less verbose?

Question

I'm currently using CloudConfigurationManager.GetSetting("setting") to get settings for my application, but it's writing logs of everything it's checking to the console (in both Debug and Release):

Getting "setting" from ServiceRuntime: FAIL.
Getting "setting" from ConfigurationManager: PASS (Data Source=...
Getting "setting" from ServiceRuntime: FAIL.
Getting "setting" from ConfigurationManager: PASS (Data Source=...

Is there any way to prevent it from doing this, or an alternative version that's less verbose?

Mostly I just like my unit test output to be nice and clean, but I'm also a little concerned that it's printing out things like connection strings (and hence passwords) in plain text on the production server.

Answer 1

CloudConfigurationManager.GetSetting now has a method overload with a parameter called outputResultsToTrace.

If you pass false to this method, then it'll disable the Trace.WriteLine used elsewhere to "spam" the Trace log.

So

var mySetting = CloudConfigurationManager.GetSetting("MySetting");

becomes

var mySetting = CloudConfigurationManager.GetSetting("MySetting", false);

I found this by looking directly at the source code on GitHub: https://github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-net/blob/52fc67253a176bea01c37c164f71c7eba8eaedba/src/Common/Configuration/CloudConfigurationManager.cs#L35

It's probably worth mentioning that this overload is not documented: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/mt634648.aspx

So I'm not sure if it's an official and supported part of the API, or if it's something that might change or go away in the future.

This change was made at the end of 2015: https://github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-net/commit/e14398136d7d3b6d5e4675f1e8ccbdd37a8c6b01

Answer 2

Not really. If you look at the code of the underlying GetValue method you'll see this:

private static string GetValue(string providerName, string settingName, Func<string, string> getValue)
{
  string str1 = getValue(settingName);
  string str2;
  if (str1 != null)
    str2 = string.Format((IFormatProvider) CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, "PASS ({0})", new object[1]
    {
      (object) str1
    });
  else
    str2 = "FAIL";
  Trace.WriteLine(string.Format((IFormatProvider) CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, "Getting \"{0}\" from {1}: {2}.", (object) settingName, (object) providerName, (object) str2));
  return str1;
}

The Trace.WriteLine is always called without taking into account Debug or Release. Now you can simply remove the Default listener which should suppress all messages:

  <system.diagnostics>
    <trace>
      <listeners>
        <remove name="Default" />
      </listeners>
    </trace>
  </system.diagnostics>

Now if you look at the CloudConfigurationManager it doesn't do that much. If this is a problem for you you can cook up something yourself, starting with this:

        if (RoleEnvironment.IsAvailable)
            return RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue(setting);
        else
            return ConfigurationManager.AppSettings[setting];

Note: The CloudConfigurationManager does a lot more than this, like loading the assembly without assembly reference.

Answer 3

Alternative option, if you're calling CloudConfigurationManager.GetSetting() in one part (ie, a wrapper/helper class):

var oldListeners = Trace.Listeners.Cast<TraceListener>().ToArray();
Trace.Listeners.Clear();

var stringValue = CloudConfigurationManager.GetSetting(key);
Trace.Listeners.AddRange(oldListeners);

First, we remove all listeners on Trace. Then we grab the setting, and re-add the listeners. Of course, this potentially could cause problems with threaded applications

Answer 4

I just installed the nuget package Microsoft.WindowsAzure.ConfigurationManager version 3.1.0, and I can confirm that the issue has been fixed in this version. Taking a look at the github issue referenced in the question's comments, we can see, in the changelog, the fetched value is no longer written to the trace output. In particular, the trace message has been changed from:

message = string.Format(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, "PASS ({0})", value);

to:

message = "PASS";

This still makes the configuration manager quite verbose though.

Answer 5

We just ran into this ourselves...so very frustrating.

We can't remove the default listener because we are logging our own stuff on it.

There is an easy workaround though. Just use the good old fashioned ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["Microsoft.ServiceBus.ConnectionString"] and you will get the info you need without the annoying logging.

Hope that helps, David

Answer 6

I had quite similar problems. I updated from Azure SDK 2.0 to 2.2 - during this process I used the NuGet Manager to update the Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Storage to the latest. The PackageManager automatically took Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Configuration to 1.8.0.0. I was not able to get this running (it was for .Net 2.0!?). After I manually set all References to

• Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Storage 2.1.0.0
• Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Configuration 2.0.0.0

everything worked.

I think this is because of the way CloudConfigurationManager.GetSetting loads the assembly and calls the funktions (via reflection).

Answer 7

Fixed in version 3.0.0. Please update Microsoft Azure Configuration Manager nuget package.

Answer 8

There are two separate issues here:

1. Setting values are logged in plain text (a security concern)
2. Messages are logged every time a setting is retrieved (a verbosity concern)

As others have noted, #1 has been fixed in a more recent version of the plugin.

Based on my experience (and some of the other responses here), #2 is still a huge annoyance.

Looking at WADLogsTable in Visual Studio's Queue Editor, note that the message level is 5 (i.e. verbose, according to this list of ETW levels).

Going off of the diagnostic config file schema, my approach to solving issue #2 was to limit the minimum severity level (e.g. warning, informational, verbose) of generic tracing to "information" (or more severe) and just ensure my own logging did not use the "verbose" level.

Here is the change I made in diagnostics.wadcfgx:

Original:

<Logs scheduledTransferPeriod="PT1M" scheduledTransferLogLevelFilter="Verbose" />

Fixed:

<Logs scheduledTransferPeriod="PT1M" scheduledTransferLogLevelFilter="Information" />