Breadcrumbs

Sentry uses breadcrumbs to create a trail of events that happened prior to an issue. These events are very similar to traditional logs, but can record more rich structured data.

This page provides an overview of manual breadcrumb recording and customization. Learn more about the information that displays on the Issue Details page and how you can filter breadcrumbs to quickly resolve issues in Using Breadcrumbs.

Manual Breadcrumbs

You can manually add breadcrumbs whenever something interesting happens. For example, you might manually record a breadcrumb if the user authenticates or another state change occurs.

Manually record a breadcrumb:

SentrySdk.AddBreadcrumb(
    message: "Authenticated user " + user.Email,
    category: "auth",
    level: BreadcrumbLevel.Info);

Automatic Breadcrumbs

The .NET SDK captures breadcrumbs automatically for:

• HTTP requests made using HttpClient are captured automatically when using SentryHttpMessageHandler. See HTTP Client Errors for setup instructions.

• Logs

  • Logs at or above a configured level are captured as breadcrumbs when using logging integrations:
  • Microsoft.Extensions.Logging (default breadcrumb level: Information)
  • Serilog
  • NLog
  • log4net

• Database Queries

  • Database queries are captured as breadcrumbs for Entity Framework 6. For Entity Framework Core, queries are captured automatically via the DiagnosticSource integration (see Automatic Instrumentation).

• MAUI Application Events

  • For MAUI applications, the SDK captures application lifecycle and user interaction events including navigation, window lifecycle, element rendering, and user actions.

• GraphQL Requests

  • When using SentryGraphQLHttpMessageHandler GraphQL requests are captured as breadcrumbs, including query type, operation name, and performance data.

Customize Breadcrumbs

The SDK allows you to customize breadcrumbs through the BeforeBreadcrumb hook.

This hook is passed an already assembled breadcrumb and, optionally, a hint object containing extra metadata. The function can modify the breadcrumb or decide to discard it entirely by returning null:

// Add this to the SDK initialization callback
options.SetBeforeBreadcrumb(breadcrumb
    // Ignore breadcrumbs from Spammy logger
    => breadcrumb.Category == "Spammy.Logger"
        ? null
        : breadcrumb);