How to enforce unique error messages [closed] - c++

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I have been trying to find a way to enforce unique error messages in our application. That is, I want to know exactly which line of code produced the error, so when users contact support we know the source of the error from the message logged.
I found this question which gave me a mechanism (using guids to enforce uniqueness), but one question remains: How do I prevent copy/paste duplication? - specifically, a developer copying the logging line itself:
Log(<guid>, errorMessage);
In this case the guid would be duplicated and no longer useful for identifying the unique line which generated the error.
The one idea I have had which would actually work is writing a tool to be run by our build server which would parse the code for error message guids, keep a list, and fail the build on a duplicate. I'm wondering if there is a cleaner solution.
Other things I've considered:
There are various ideas using some sort of central listing of error messages, but I have not found one which addresses the copy/paste issue.
There are also a number of schemes which would require keeping a manual list in some way. I don't want to pursue something like this as it creates the possibility of discrepancies between the list & production code.
I've also seen suggestions to use the stack trace, but I'm a bit hesitant to do that for security & performance reasons.

Answer 1

I don't know if this is really what you're looking for, but you can include the file, method, line number (and other things) in your log message without needing a unique number that you would later search the source code for if you make use of the System.Diagnostics.StackTrace class. This way, even if there's a copy/paste violation, you still know exactly where the call to Log came from.
Here's a simplified example that returns the file name, method signature, and line number of a stack trace item. Note that this code finds the stack trace item for a call to the "Log" method and returns the next one. That will be more clear shortly:
using System.Diagnostics; // Needed for the StackTrace class
private static string GetStackTraceInfo()
{
var stackTrace = new StackTrace(true).GetFrames();
// Find the item just after the call to teh 'Log' method:
var item = stackTrace?
.SkipWhile(st => !st.GetMethod().Name.Equals("Log"))
.Skip(1)
.FirstOrDefault();
return item == null
? string.Empty
: string.Format("{0} => {1}, line #{2}", Path.GetFileName(item.GetFileName()),
item.GetMethod(), item.GetFileLineNumber());
}
Here's the Log method that enforces the stack trace info added to a log (and this is the method name that we were searching for in the code above):
private static void Log(int id, string message)
{
Console.WriteLine($"Error #{id}: {message} ({GetStackTraceInfo()})");
}
And an example usage:
private static void Main()
{
DoSomething();
DoSomethingElse();
GetKeyFromUser("\nDone! Press any key to exit...");
}
private static void DoSomething()
{
Log(1000, "I copied/pasted this error message from somewhere!");
}
private static void DoSomethingElse()
{
Log(1000, "I copied/pasted this error message from somewhere!");
}
Output