Background

Whilst DNN is an asp.net webforms application, we make extensive use of WebAPI based service framework to read, write and delete data without requiring a page request. In addition, this is used to return fragments of data rather than having to return all data at once e.g. a filepicker object might return the list of folders, but only return the list of files when a folder is selected.

If code executing within a webform has an exception, the exception is logged in the Event viewer - however if this happens in a service request there are a few other places that can also provide useful debugging information. If you notice a service framework issue in either platform code or your own custom code, it is recommended you do the following:

• Log in as admin/host and check the Event-viewer|Event viewer]
• Set log4net to All and see if any additional details are stored in the log4net logfiles.
• User a HTTP proxy such as fiddler to see the requests - if one has a failing http status (such as 500) then you can inspect what the exception was that was thrown.