DragoAnt.Observer

Format-neutral building blocks of the DragoAnt observers — mask tags, paths, name tests, results, options, value and comment policies, and the masking strategy — so that one strategy or policy works for JSON today and for CSV and YAML next.

Packages

Package	Targets	What
DragoAnt.Observer.Abstractions	netstandard2.0	MaskKind, MaskTag — no dependencies, for model libraries
DragoAnt.Observer.Core	net8.0, net10.0	options, strategy, policies, results, paths, name tests

You usually reference a format package instead, which brings Core: DragoAnt.System.Text.Json.Observer for JSON.

Key features

• One strategy for every format — ValueMaskStrategy.Mask(in MaskContext, MaskValueWriter) sees the whole value, its kind, the tag, the path and its position, and writes through a format's writer, which validates numbers.
• The hash of Microsoft's HmacRedactor — MaskKind.Hash writes the same text for the same key and key id, so hashes correlate with logs redacted by Microsoft.Extensions.Compliance.Redaction (hashing).
• Policies as values — ValuePolicy.AllowList / BlockList / NullList / Tagged(tag) for unmatched values, and CommentPolicy with comment rules for comments (comments).
• Results that say why — MaskResult with MaskStatus and MaskFlags (InputTruncated, OutputCapped, ValueCut, TrailingData, InvalidUtf8Replaced, Depth).
• Allocation-free paths and name tests — DataPath keeps names as UTF-8 and formats into a span; Names tests compare UTF-8 bytes and follow one case option.

Install

dotnet add package DragoAnt.Observer.Core

Quick start

using DragoAnt.Observer;

var options = new ObserverOptions { MaxValueBytes = 256, HashKeyId = 7 };
Console.WriteLine(ValuePolicy.Tagged(MaskTag.Hash));
Console.WriteLine(MaskTag.Custom("email"));
Console.WriteLine(options.Comments);
// Tagged(Hash)
// Custom (email)
// AllowList

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md; report vulnerabilities as described in SECURITY.md. Licensed under the MIT licence.

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Hand-written, extended with AI.