Data Annotations to sanitize request and response before logging - asp.net

Question

I'm looking for a reliable solution to log details of requests and responses made to and from our controllers. However, some of the data passing through contains sensitive information that should not be written to a log.
In the controller, the inbound request is bound to a single model from the request body, and as the request is answered, a single model is passed to the Ok() result like this (very simplified):
[HttpGet]
[Route("Some/Route")]
public IHttpActionResult SomeController([FromBody] RequestType requestObj)
{
ResponseType responseObj = GetResponse(requestObj)
return this.Ok(responseObj);
}
Now my goal is to somehow log the contents of the request and response object at the beginning and end of the controller, respectively. What I would like to do is bind the models first, then log out their attributes. An example of the RequestType is something like:
public class RequestType
{
public string SomeAttribute { get; set; }
public string AnotherAttribute { get; set; }
public string Password{ get; set; }
}
And the log would look something like:
[date-time] Request to SomeController:
SomeAttribute: "value_from_request"
AnotherAttribute: "another_value"
Password: "supersecret123"
Now clearly we don't want the password to be logged. So I would like to create a custom data annotation that would not log certain fields. Its use would look like this (updated RequestType):
public class RequestType
{
public string SomeAttribute { get; set; }
public string AnotherAttribute { get; set; }
[SensitiveData]
public string Password{ get; set; }
}
Where would I start with this? I'm not incredibly familliar with .NET, but know that there are many sort of magic classes that can be subclassed to override some of their functionality. Is there any such class that can help here? Even better, is there any way to do this during the model binding? So we could catch errors that occur during model binding as well?

Answer 1

We should be able to achieve what you're looking for with an ActionFilterAttribute.
Capture Requests Attribute
[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Class | AttributeTargets.Method, AllowMultiple = false, Inherited = false)]
public sealed class CaptureRequestsAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute // *IMPORTANT* This is in the System.Web.Http.Filters namespace, not System.Web.Mvc
{
public override void OnActionExecuting(HttpActionContext actionContext)
{
var messages = actionContext.ActionArguments.Select(arg => GetLogMessage(arg.Value));
var logMessage = $"[{DateTime.Now}] Request to " +
$"{actionContext.ControllerContext.Controller}]:\n{string.Join("\n", messages)}";
WriteToLog(logMessage);
base.OnActionExecuting(actionContext);
}
public override void OnActionExecuted(HttpActionExecutedContext actionExecutedContext)
{
var result = actionExecutedContext.Response.Content as ObjectContent;
var message = GetLogMessage(result?.Value);
var logMessage = $"[{DateTime.Now}] Response from " +
$"{actionExecutedContext.ActionContext.ControllerContext.Controller}:\n{message}";
WriteToLog(logMessage);
base.OnActionExecuted(actionExecutedContext);
}
private static void WriteToLog(string message)
{
// todo: write you logging stuff here
}
private static string GetLogMessage(object objectToLog)
{
if (objectToLog == null)
{
return string.Empty;
}
var type = objectToLog.GetType();
var properties = type.GetProperties();
if (properties.Length == 0)
{
return $"{type}: {objectToLog}";
}
else
{
var nonSensitiveProperties = type
.GetProperties()
.Where(IsNotSensitiveData)
.Select(property => $"{property.Name}: {property.GetValue(objectToLog)}");
return string.Join("\n", nonSensitiveProperties);
}
}
private static bool IsNotSensitiveData(PropertyInfo property) =>
property.GetCustomAttributes<SensitiveDataAttribute>().Count() == 0;
}
Sensitive Data Attribute
[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Property, AllowMultiple = false, Inherited = true)]
public sealed class SensitiveDataAttribute : Attribute
{
}
Then, you can just add it to your WebApi controller (or a specific method in it):
[CaptureRequests]
public class ValuesController : ApiController
{
// .. methods
}
And finally your models can just add the SensitiveDataAttribute:
public class TestModel
{
public string Username { get; set; }
[SensitiveData]
public string Password { get; set; }
}

Answer 2

This does not make use of DataAnnotations,however, One way that comes to mind would be to use the serialization. If your payload is within a reasonable size you could serialize and deserialize your RequestType class when reading and writing to/from a log. This would require a custom serialization format or making use of the default, xml.
[Seriliazeble()]
public class RequestType
{
public string SomeAttribute { get; set; }
public string AnotherAttribute { get; set; }
[NonSerialized()]
public string Password{ get; set; }
}
Using the above attribute will omit Password from serialization. Then you copuld proceed to Logger.Log(MySerializer.Serialize(MyRequest)); and your sensitive data will be omitted.
This link describes the approach in detail.
For xml serialization, simply use the XmlSerializer class.
public class MySerializationService
{
public string SerializeObject(object item)
{
XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(item.GetType());
System.IO.MemoryStream aMemStr = new System.IO.MemoryStream();
System.Xml.XmlTextWriter writer = new System.Xml.XmlTextWriter(aMemStr, null);
serializer.Serialize(writer, item);
string strXml = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString(aMemStr.ToArray());
return strXml;
}
public object DeSerializeObject(Type objectType, string objectString)
{
object obj = null;
XmlSerializer xs = new XmlSerializer(objectType);
obj = xs.Deserialize(new StringReader(objectString));
return obj;
}
}
Then using the above or similar methods you can read and write in a custom format.
Write :
string logData=new MySerializationService().SerializeObject(myRequest);
Read :
RequestType loggedRequest= (RequestType)new MySerializationService().DeSerializeObject(new RequestType().GetType(), logData);