Table of Contents

Exception handling

Unhandled exceptions in desktop, mobile, and background service applications can crash the process without warning. AppDiagnostics provides a safety net by subscribing to AppDomain.UnhandledException and TaskScheduler.UnobservedTaskException, logging the exceptions, and giving your code a chance to respond.

Setting up AppDiagnostics

using MADE.Diagnostics;
using MADE.Diagnostics.Logging;

var logger = new FileEventLogger();
var diagnostics = new AppDiagnostics(logger);

Once created, AppDiagnostics automatically subscribes to the global exception handlers. Any unhandled exception is logged at the Critical level with a correlation ID.

Observing exceptions in your code

The ExceptionObserved event fires whenever an unhandled exception is caught. Use this to display error dialogs, send telemetry, or perform cleanup:

diagnostics.ExceptionObserved += (sender, args) =>
{
    // args.CorrelationId matches the log entry ID
    // args.Exception is the unhandled exception
    ShowErrorDialog($"An unexpected error occurred. Reference: {args.CorrelationId}");
};

The correlation ID links the user-facing error message to the detailed log entry, making it easy to find the relevant diagnostics when a user reports an issue.

When to use this

AppDiagnostics is designed for applications where you control the process lifecycle:

  • Desktop applications (WPF, WinForms, MAUI) where a crash loses the user's work.
  • Background services where you want to log the failure before the process exits.
  • Console applications that need graceful error reporting.

For ASP.NET Core applications, use the built-in exception handling middleware instead. See Exception middleware for MADE's ASP.NET Core exception handler.

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