Tracing calls to downstream HTTP web services with the X-Ray SDK for .NET - AWS X-Ray
Services or capabilities described in AWS documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the AWS European Sovereign Cloud Region, see the AWS European Sovereign Cloud User Guide.

Tracing calls to downstream HTTP web services with the X-Ray SDK for .NET

Note

X-Ray SDK/Daemon Maintenance Notice – On February 25th, 2026, the AWS X-Ray SDKs/Daemon will enter maintenance mode, where AWS will limit X-Ray SDK and Daemon releases to address security issues only. For more information on the support timeline, see X-Ray SDK and Daemon Support timeline. We recommend to migrate to OpenTelemetry. For more information on migrating to OpenTelemetry, see Migrating from X-Ray instrumentation to OpenTelemetry instrumentation .

When your application makes calls to microservices or public HTTP APIs, you can use the X-Ray SDK for .NET's GetResponseTraced extension method for System.Net.HttpWebRequest to instrument those calls and add the API to the service graph as a downstream service.

Example HttpWebRequest
using System.Net;
using Amazon.XRay.Recorder.Core;
using Amazon.XRay.Recorder.Handlers.System.Net;

private void MakeHttpRequest()
{
  HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("http://names.example.com/api");
  request.GetResponseTraced();
}

For asynchronous calls, use GetAsyncResponseTraced.

request.GetAsyncResponseTraced();

If you use system.net.http.httpclient, use the HttpClientXRayTracingHandler delegating handler to record calls.

Example HttpClient
using System.Net.Http;
using Amazon.XRay.Recorder.Core;
using Amazon.XRay.Recorder.Handlers.System.Net;

private void MakeHttpRequest()
{
  var httpClient = new HttpClient(new HttpClientXRayTracingHandler(new HttpClientHandler()));
  httpClient.GetAsync(URL);
}

When you instrument a call to a downstream web API, the X-Ray SDK for .NET records a subsegment with information about the HTTP request and response. X-Ray uses the subsegment to generate an inferred segment for the API.

Example Subsegment for a downstream HTTP call
{
  "id": "004f72be19cddc2a",
  "start_time": 1484786387.131,
  "end_time": 1484786387.501,
  "name": "names.example.com",
  "namespace": "remote",
  "http": {
    "request": {
      "method": "GET",
      "url": "https://names.example.com/"
    },
    "response": {
      "content_length": -1,
      "status": 200
    }
  }
}
Example Inferred segment for a downstream HTTP call
{
  "id": "168416dc2ea97781",
  "name": "names.example.com",
  "trace_id": "1-62be1272-1b71c4274f39f122afa64eab",
  "start_time": 1484786387.131,
  "end_time": 1484786387.501,
  "parent_id": "004f72be19cddc2a",
  "http": {
    "request": {
      "method": "GET",
      "url": "https://names.example.com/"
    },
    "response": {
      "content_length": -1,
      "status": 200
    }
  },
  "inferred": true
}