ServiceStack message queue handling and Profiler

Question

I'm currently trying out the persistent mini profiler feature of ServiceStack and I'm currently having trouble registering profile information for my Redis Message Queue handlers.

A bit more background: I have some regular REST api handlers which takes in a request, defers some updates of account information and replies OK back to the caller. These messages are posted to a Redis server, using the ServiceStack Redis MQ pattern. Therefore, the Redis message handling is registered as:

var redisFactory = new PooledRedisClientManager(redisClients);
var mqHost = new RedisMqServer(redisFactory, retryCount: 2);

var defaultThreadCount = 4;
mqHost.RegisterHandler<SomeDto>(m => this.ServiceController.ExecuteMessage(m), noOfThreads:defaultThreadCount);
mqHost.RegisterHandler<SomeOtherDto>(m => this.ServiceController.ExecuteMessage(m), noOfThreads:defaultThreadCount);
mqHost.Start();    

And my messages are being handled properly too.

In a custom ServiceRunner I've enabled profiling of all requests in the BeforeEachRequest and added a custom Profiler step like this:

public override void BeforeEachRequest(IRequest requestContext, T request)
{
    Profiler.Start();

    using (Profiler.StepStatic("Executing handler"))
    {
        base.BeforeEachRequest(requestContext, request);        
    }
 }

All my HTTP REST requests are making it to the SQL tables, but none of the MQ handler calls are registered. And I'm 100% confident that the handlers are indeed being executed, since the result of that execution is stored in a MongoDB collection.

Anything I'm missing?

-- EDIT --

I forgot to mention that this project is indeed hosted via an ASP.NET application. The AppHost is initialized in Global.asax App_Start - I just found it more convenient to have "before request" handing in a custom service runner rather than the ASP.NET Begin_Request handler.

Answer 1

I have a similar problem with a self hosted server. The problem is that the profiler uses HttpContext.Current to store the profiling results. If there is no valid context it does not know which profiling 'session' to add the results to.

It is possible to implement your own ProfilingProvider by setting Profile.Settings.ProfilingProvider, but, unless I am missing something, it will be tricky (if not impossible) to implement this properly in an Async environment with the current IProfilerProvider interface.

Answer 2

I wrote a very simple and naive provider which you can use for profiling. This will not pick up any of the steps that ServiceStack already adds by default, but it might still be useful for your own debugging.

Example use:

Profiler.Settings.ProfilerProvider = RequestProfilerProvider.Instance;
PreRequestFilters.Add((req, res) => RequestProfiler.Start(req));
GlobalRequestFilters.Add((req, res, dto) => {
  var profiler = RequestProfiler.GetProfiler(req);
  using (profiler.Step("Very slow step")) {
    Thread.Sleep(1000);
  }
});
GlobalResponseFilters.Add((req, res, dto) => RequestProfiler.Stop(req));