Use ELMAH with Umbraco

Most of this article has been copied from Lee Kelleher's blog post (with permission).

1. Download the latest ELMAH binary release (1.0 Beta 3 at the time of writing [direct link]) from the Google Code project page. (http://code.google.com/p/elmah/)
2. Extract the files from the ZIP.
3. Select the DLLs from the “/bin/” folder, for Umbraco you’ll be using the DLL from “/bin/net-2.0/Release/“.  For the benefit of this post, I decided to use the SQLite option to store the error logs in a database. I could easily have used the SQL Server or VistaDB options.
4. Drop the DLLs into the “/bin/” folder of your Umbraco installation.
5. Open the web.config of your Umbraco installation and add the following lines:

Add the following to your <configSections> section:

<sectionGroup name="elmah">
	<section name="security" requirePermission="false" type="Elmah.SecuritySectionHandler, Elmah"/>
	<section name="errorLog" requirePermission="false" type="Elmah.ErrorLogSectionHandler, Elmah"/>
	<section name="errorMail" requirePermission="false" type="Elmah.ErrorMailSectionHandler, Elmah"/>
	<section name="errorFilter" requirePermission="false" type="Elmah.ErrorFilterSectionHandler, Elmah"/>
</sectionGroup>

Add the following just after the </configSections> section:

<elmah>
	<security allowRemoteAccess="yes" />
	<errorLog type="Elmah.SQLiteErrorLog, Elmah" connectionStringName="ELMAH.SQLite" />
	<errorMail from="no-reply@domain.com" to="webmaster@domain.com" />
</elmah>

Add the following to your <connectionStrings> section, (if you have one, otherwise create one):

<add name="ELMAH.SQLite" connectionString="Data Source=~/data/errors.s3db"/>

In the <httpModules> section, add this:

<add name="ErrorMail" type="Elmah.ErrorMailModule, Elmah"/>
<add name="ErrorLog" type="Elmah.ErrorLogModule, Elmah"/>
<add name="ErrorFilter" type="Elmah.ErrorFilterModule, Elmah"/>

And in the <httpHandlers> section, add this:

<add verb="POST,GET,HEAD" path="elmah.axd" type="Elmah.ErrorLogPageFactory, Elmah"/>

If you are using the .net 3.5 configuration, also add these:

In the <system.webServer> modules section, add this:

<add name="Elmah.ErrorMailModule" type="Elmah.ErrorMailModule" preCondition="managedHandler" />
<add name="Elmah.ErrorLogModule" type="Elmah.ErrorLogModule" preCondition="managedHandler" />
<add name="Elmah.ErrorFilterModule" type="Elmah.ErrorFilterModule" preCondition="managedHandler" />

In the <system.webServer> handlers section, add this:

<add verb="POST,GET,HEAD" name="Elmah" path="elmah.axd" type="Elmah.ErrorLogPageFactory, Elmah" />

By now you should have ELMAH up and running.  Open up your web-browser and go to http://localhost/elmah.axd, (obviously replace “localhost” with whatever your hostname is). You should see the ELMAH Error Log page.  Since this is open to the public, you may want to secure it, see the Securing Error Log Pages article for further details.

The last part is to integrate the ELMAH Error Log page into the Umbraco back-end. Create a new user-control in the “/usercontrols/” folder called “ELMAH.ascx”, using the following HTML:

<%@ Control Language="C#" %>
<iframe height="98%" width="100%" scrolling="auto" src="elmah.axd" style="margin-top:5px;"></iframe>

Then in the “/config/Dashboard.config” configuration file, I added a new section for the developer area.

<section>
	<areas>
		<area>developer</area>
	</areas>
	<tab caption="Error Logging Modules and Handlers for ASP.NET">
		<control>/usercontrols/ELMAH.ascx</control>
	</tab>
</section>

Now in the Umbraco back-end the developer area, you should see the ELMAH page.