How to detect a request is an Application Insights ping test

In one of the apps I was developing I needed to collect some usage data. However, I did not want to run this logic for requests generated by the ping tests which test the app's availability from Application Insights.

So I thought there must be some kind of headers or something that would say the request is a ping test.

Well, the App Insights SDK knows which request is synthetic right?

So I found this class in the ASP.NET Core SDK source code: SyntheticTelemetryInitializer

/// <summary>
/// This will allow to mark synthetic traffic from availability tests
/// </summary>
internal class SyntheticTelemetryInitializer : TelemetryInitializerBase
{
    private const string SyntheticTestRunId = "SyntheticTest-RunId";
    private const string SyntheticTestLocation = "SyntheticTest-Location";

    private const string SyntheticSourceHeaderValue = "Application Insights Availability Monitoring";

    public SyntheticTelemetryInitializer(IHttpContextAccessor httpContextAccessor)
            : base(httpContextAccessor)
    {
    }

    protected override void OnInitializeTelemetry(HttpContext platformContext, RequestTelemetry requestTelemetry, ITelemetry telemetry)
    {
        if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(telemetry.Context.Operation.SyntheticSource))
        {
            var runIdHeader = platformContext.Request.Headers[SyntheticTestRunId];
            var locationHeader = platformContext.Request.Headers[SyntheticTestLocation];

            if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(runIdHeader) &&
                !string.IsNullOrEmpty(locationHeader))
            {
                telemetry.Context.Operation.SyntheticSource = SyntheticSourceHeaderValue;

                telemetry.Context.User.Id = locationHeader + "_" + runIdHeader;
                telemetry.Context.Session.Id = runIdHeader;
            }
        }
    }
}

It clearly identifies two headers which identify the request as a ping test:

1. SyntheticTest-RunId
2. SyntheticTest-Location

If these two headers exist in a request and have values, then it is a ping test request :)