AWS Documentation » AWS X-Ray » Developer Guide » AWS X-Ray SDK for .NET » Creating Additional Subsegments

Creating Additional Subsegments

Subsegments extend a trace's segment with details about work done in order to serve a request. Each time you make a call with an instrumented client, the X-Ray SDK records the information generated in a subsegment. You can create additional subsegments to group other subsegments, to measure the performance of a section of code, or to record annotations and metadata.

To manage subsegments, use the BeginSubsegment and EndSubsegment methods. Perform any work in the subsegment in a try block and use AddException to trace exceptions. Call EndSubsegment in a finally block to ensure that the subsegment is closed.

Example Controller.cs – Custom Subsegment

AWSXRayRecorder.Instance.BeginSubsegment("custom method");
try
{
  DoWork();
}
catch (Exception e)
{
  AWSXRayRecorder.Instance.AddException(e);
}
finally
{
  AWSXRayRecorder.Instance.EndSubsegment();
}

When you create a subsegment within a segment or another subsegment, the X-Ray SDK for .NET generates an ID for it and records the start time and end time.

Example Subsegment with Metadata

"subsegments": [{
  "id": "6f1605cd8a07cb70",
  "start_time": 1.480305974194E9,
  "end_time": 1.4803059742E9,
  "name": "Custom subsegment for UserModel.saveUser function",
  "metadata": {
    "debug": {
      "test": "Metadata string from UserModel.saveUser"
    }
  },