RE: Best way to monitor online user activity?

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Thanks for the reply, Steven. That was very helpful. I have a couple
questions.

First, how would you get the user information during
application.BeginRequest? I've tried using these:

HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.Name.ToString()
application.User.Identity.Name.ToString()

and they both throw exceptions.

Second, what would be the 'best practice' for storing the user activity
logged by this module to be accessed from another page? In a database or
other means?

Thanks again for your help!



"Steven Cheng[MSFT]" wrote:

Hello Matt,

Do you mean you want to create a profile component that will log all the
requests from each client users(to certain pages in the application)?

Based on my experience, since you want to capture both the user identiy
info and the page they're requesting, and also need to separate this
profile logic from normal page code logic, I think using a custom
HttpModule should be a good approach.

Each page request arrive at IIS and ASP.NET runtime will be processed by an
HttpApplication pipeline, and at the begining of the pipeline, there are
series of httpModules that will do some preprocessing before the final
handler that process the request. e.g. you can find those predefined
built-in httpmodules in the global web.config(or machine.config for .net
1.1):

#each module is used for a certain service(such as SessionState,
OutputCache, FormsAuth....)
=============================
<httpModules>
<add name="OutputCache"
type="System.Web.Caching.OutputCacheModule" />
<add name="Session"
type="System.Web.SessionState.SessionStateModule" />
<add name="WindowsAuthentication"
type="System.Web.Security.WindowsAuthenticationModule" />
<add name="FormsAuthentication"
type="System.Web.Security.FormsAuthenticationModule" />
<add name="PassportAuthentication"
type="System.Web.Security.PassportAuthenticationModule" />
<add name="RoleManager"
type="System.Web.Security.RoleManagerModule" />
<add name="UrlAuthorization"
type="System.Web.Security.UrlAuthorizationModule" />
<add name="FileAuthorization"
type="System.Web.Security.FileAuthorizationModule" />
<add name="AnonymousIdentification"
type="System.Web.Security.AnonymousIdentificationModule" />
<add name="Profile" type="System.Web.Profile.ProfileModule" />
<add name="ErrorHandlerModule"
type="System.Web.Mobile.ErrorHandlerModule, System.Web.Mobile,
Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
</httpModules>
===============================


For your scenario, you want to get the client user identity info and
session info, you can create a custom httpmodule and configure it behind
those built-in module. And in custom httpmodule code, you can hook the
certain global event you want(see below msdn reference) and add the tracing
and logging code there(you can easily get the requested path, or other
client user info there also)


#How To Create an ASP.NET HTTP Module Using Visual C# .NET
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307996/en-us

#How to: Create Custom HTTP Modules
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms227673.aspx


Here is also a msdn reference introducing the ASP.ENT application's
application life cycle:


#ASP.NET Application Life Cycle Overview
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178473.aspx


Hope this helps.

Sincerely,

Steven Cheng

Microsoft MSDN Online Support Lead



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