This post revisits a previous post “Don’t forget to flush” Application insights and shows how to configure the instrumentation key in code or via the ApplicationInsights.config file.

 class Program
   {
      static void Main(string[] args)
      {
#if INSTRUMENTATION_KEY_TELEMETRY_CONFIGURATION
         if (args.Length != 1)
         {
            Console.WriteLine("Usage AzureApplicationInsightsClientConsole <instrumentationKey>");
            return;
         }

         TelemetryConfiguration telemetryConfiguration = new TelemetryConfiguration(args[0]);
         TelemetryClient telemetryClient = new TelemetryClient(telemetryConfiguration);
         telemetryClient.TrackTrace("INSTRUMENTATION_KEY_TELEMETRY_CONFIGURATION", SeverityLevel.Information);
#endif
#if INSTRUMENTATION_KEY_APPLICATION_INSIGHTS_CONFIG
         TelemetryClient telemetryClient = new TelemetryClient();
         telemetryClient.TrackTrace("INSTRUMENTATION_KEY_APPLICATION_INSIGHTS_CONFIG", SeverityLevel.Information);
#endif
         telemetryClient.TrackTrace("This is an AI API Verbose message", SeverityLevel.Verbose);
         telemetryClient.TrackTrace("This is an AI API Information message", SeverityLevel.Information);
         telemetryClient.TrackTrace("This is an AI API Warning message", SeverityLevel.Warning);
         telemetryClient.TrackTrace("This is an AI API Error message", SeverityLevel.Error);
         telemetryClient.TrackTrace("This is an AI API Critical message", SeverityLevel.Critical);

         telemetryClient.Flush();

         Console.WriteLine("Press <enter> to exit");
         Console.ReadLine();
      }

A sample project is available here

Revisited March 2020

An Azure solution I was working on had a .Net console application which ran on a server at the customer’s premises. It was scheduled task that uploaded some files to azure blob storage every 5 minutes.

To help with debugging I added support for Azure application Insights but after monitoring the application for a while I noticed some shutdown events were not getting uploaded.

Initially I was a bit confused because when I ran the application on my desktop it worked fine (It works on my machine). I found this was because when launched from the debugger the application would upload any files it found then wait until I pressed to exit and this was enough time for the shutdown messages to get uploaded.

The code for a smallest example application is below (I pass the instrumentation key as a command line parameter).

//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Copyright (c) 2018, devMobile Software
//
// Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
// you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
// You may obtain a copy of the License at
//
//     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
//
// Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
// distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
// WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
// See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
// limitations under the License.
//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
using System;
using Microsoft.ApplicationInsights;
using Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.Extensibility;

namespace devMobile.Azure.ApplicationInsightsClientConsole
{
   class Program
   {
      static void Main(string[] args)
      {
         if (args.Length != 1)
         {
            Console.WriteLine("Command line argument InstrumentationKey missing");
            return;
         }
         TelemetryConfiguration.Active.InstrumentationKey = args[0];

         TelemetryClient telemetryClient = new TelemetryClient();

         telemetryClient.TrackTrace("This is Application Insights native");

         telemetryClient.TrackTrace("Application startup");

         // application does stuff

         telemetryClient.TrackTrace("Application shutdown");

         telemetryClient.Flush();
      }
   }
}

Sample project AzureApplicationInsightsClientConsole