THIS README IS FOR THE MASTER BRANCH AND REFLECTS THE WORK CURRENTLY EXISTING ON THE MASTER BRANCH. IF YOU ARE WISHING TO USE A NON-MASTER BRANCH OF EXCEPTION NOTIFICATION, PLEASE CONSULT THAT BRANCH'S README AND NOT THIS ONE.
The Exception Notification gem provides a set of notifiers for sending notifications when errors occur in a Rack/Rails application.
The built-in notifiers can deliver notifications by email, campfire rooms or via webhooks.
There's a great Railscast about Exception Notification you can see that may help you getting started.
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- Ruby 1.9.3 or greater
- Rails 3.1 or greater, Sinatra or another Rack-based application.
For previous releases, please checkout this.
Add the following line to your application's Gemfile:
gem 'exception_notification'
As of Rails 3 ExceptionNotification is used as a rack middleware, or in the environment you want it to run. In most cases you would want ExceptionNotification to run on production. Thus, you can make it work by putting the following lines in your config/environments/production.rb
:
Rails.application.config.middleware.use ExceptionNotification::Rack,
:email => {
:email_prefix => "[PREFIX] ",
:sender_address => %{"notifier" <notifier@example.com>},
:exception_recipients => %w{exceptions@example.com}
}
Note: In order to enable delivery notifications by email make sure you have ActionMailer configured.
In order to use ExceptionNotification with Sinatra, please take a look in the example application.
As of 4.x version the configuration syntax has changed. All email related options MUST BE nested under the :email
key. Thus, previous configuration like:
Rails.application.config.middleware.use ExceptionNotifier,
:email_prefix => "[PREFIX] ",
:sender_address => %{"notifier" <notifier@example.com>},
:exception_recipients => %w{exceptions@example.com}
becomes:
Rails.application.config.middleware.use ExceptionNotification::Rack,
:email => {
:email_prefix => "[PREFIX] ",
:sender_address => %{"notifier" <notifier@example.com>},
:exception_recipients => %w{exceptions@example.com}
}
Beside that, the rack middleware was renamed to ExceptionNotification::Rack
.
ExceptionNotification relies on notifiers to deliver notifications when errors occur in your applications. By default, three notifiers are available: email notifier, campfire notifier and webhook notifier. But, you also can easily implement your own custom notifier.
The Email notifier sends notifications by email. The notifications/emails sent includes information about the current request, session, and environment, and also gives a backtrace of the exception.
After an exception notification has been delivered the rack environment variable 'exception_notifier.delivered' will be set to true.
For the email to be sent, there must be a default ActionMailer delivery_method
setting configured. If you do not have one, you can use the following code (assuming your app server machine has sendmail
). Depending on the environment you want ExceptionNotification to run in, put the following code in your config/environments/production.rb
and/or config/environments/development.rb
:
config.action_mailer.delivery_method = :sendmail
# Defaults to:
# config.action_mailer.sendmail_settings = {
# :location => '/usr/sbin/sendmail',
# :arguments => '-i -t'
# }
config.action_mailer.perform_deliveries = true
config.action_mailer.raise_delivery_errors = true
String, default: %("Exception Notifier" exception.notifier@example.com)
Who the message is from.
String/Array of strings, default: []
Who the message is destined for, can be a string of addresses, or an array of addresses.
String, default: [ERROR]
The subject's prefix of the message.
Array of strings, default: %w(request session environment backtrace)
By default, the notification email includes four parts: request, session, environment, and backtrace (in that order). You can customize how each of those sections are rendered by placing a partial named for that part in your app/views/exception_notifier
directory (e.g., _session.rhtml
). Each partial has access to the following variables:
@kontroller # the controller that caused the error
@request # the current request object
@exception # the exception that was raised
@backtrace # a sanitized version of the exception's backtrace
@data # a hash of optional data values that were passed to the notifier
@sections # the array of sections to include in the email
You can reorder the sections, or exclude sections completely, by using sections
option. You can even add new sections that
describe application-specific data--just add the section's name to the list (wherever you'd like), and define the corresponding partial. Like the following example with two new added sections:
Rails.application.config.middleware.use ExceptionNotification::Rack,
:email => {
:email_prefix => "[PREFIX] ",
:sender_address => %{"notifier" <notifier@example.com>},
:exception_recipients => %w{exceptions@example.com},
:sections => %w{my_section1 my_section2}
}
Place your custom sections under ./app/views/exception_notifier/
with the suffix .text.erb
, e.g. ./app/views/exception_notifier/_my_section1.text.erb
.
If your new section requires information that isn't available by default, make sure it is made available to the email using the exception_data
macro:
class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
before_filter :log_additional_data
...
protected
def log_additional_data
request.env["exception_notifier.exception_data"] = {
:document => @document,
:person => @person
}
end
...
end
In the above case, @document
and @person
would be made available to the email renderer, allowing your new section(s) to access and display them. See the existing sections defined by the plugin for examples of how to write your own.
Array of strings, default: %w(backtrace data)
When using background notifications some variables are not available in the views, like @kontroller
and @request
. Thus, you may want to include different sections for background notifications:
Rails.application.config.middleware.use ExceptionNotification::Rack,
:email => {
:email_prefix => "[PREFIX] ",
:sender_address => %{"notifier" <notifier@example.com>},
:exception_recipients => %w{exceptions@example.com},
:background_sections => %w{my_section1 my_section2 backtrace data}
}
Hash of strings, default: {}
Additionally, you may want to set customized headers on the outcoming emails. To do so, simply use the :email_headers
option:
Rails.application.config.middleware.use ExceptionNotification::Rack,
:email => {
:email_prefix => "[PREFIX] ",
:sender_address => %{"notifier" <notifier@example.com>},
:exception_recipients => %w{exceptions@example.com},
:email_headers => { "X-Custom-Header" => "foobar" }
}
Boolean, default: true
If enabled, include the exception message in the subject. Use :verbose_subject => false
to exclude it.
Boolean, default: false
If enabled, remove numbers from subject so they thread as a single one. Use :normalize_subject => true
to enable it.
Symbol, default: :text
By default, ExceptionNotification sends emails in plain text, in order to sends multipart notifications (aka HTML emails) use :email_format => :html
.
Symbol, default: :smtp
By default, ExceptionNotification sends emails using the ActionMailer configuration of the application. In order to send emails by another delivery method, use the delivery_method
option:
Rails.application.config.middleware.use ExceptionNotification::Rack,
:email => {
:email_prefix => "[PREFIX] ",
:sender_address => %{"notifier" <notifier@example.com>},
:exception_recipients => %w{exceptions@example.com},
:delivery_method => :postmark,
:postmark_settings => {
:api_key => ENV["POSTMARK_API_KEY"]
}
}
Besides the delivery_method
option, you also can customize the mailer settings by passing a hash under an option named DELIVERY_METHOD_settings
. Thus, you can use override specific SMTP settings for notifications using:
Rails.application.config.middleware.use ExceptionNotification::Rack,
:email => {
:email_prefix => "[PREFIX] ",
:sender_address => %{"notifier" <notifier@example.com>},
:exception_recipients => %w{exceptions@example.com},
:delivery_method => :smtp,
:smtp_settings => {
:user_name => "bob",
:password => "password",
}
}
A complete list of smtp_settings
options can be found in the ActionMailer Configuration documentation.
String, default: ActionMailer::Base
The parent mailer which ExceptionNotification mailer inherit from.
This notifier sends notifications to your Campfire room.
Just add the tinder gem to your Gemfile
:
gem 'tinder'
To configure it, you need to set the subdomain
, token
and room_name
options, like this:
Rails.application.config.middleware.use ExceptionNotification::Rack,
:email => {
:email_prefix => "[PREFIX] ",
:sender_address => %{"notifier" <notifier@example.com>},
:exception_recipients => %w{exceptions@example.com}
},
:campfire => {
:subdomain => 'my_subdomain',
:token => 'my_token',
:room_name => 'my_room'
}
String, required
Your subdomain at Campfire.
String, required
The Campfire room where the notifications must be published to.
String, required
The API token to allow access to your Campfire account.
For more options to set Campfire, like ssl, check here.
This notifier sends notifications to your Hipchat room.
Just add the hipchat gem to your Gemfile
:
gem 'hipchat'
To configure it, you need to set the token
and room_name
options, like this:
Rails.application.config.middleware.use ExceptionNotification::Rack,
:email => {
:email_prefix => "[PREFIX] ",
:sender_address => %{"notifier" <notifier@example.com>},
:exception_recipients => %w{exceptions@example.com}
},
:hipchat => {
:api_token => 'my_token',
:room_name => 'my_room'
}
String, required
The HipChat room where the notifications must be published to.
String, required
The API token to allow access to your HipChat account.
Boolean, optional
Notify users. Default : false.
String, optional
Color of the message. Default : 'red'.
String, optional, maximum length : 15
Message will appear from this nickname. Default : 'Exception'.
For all options & possible values see Hipchat API.
This notifier ships notifications over the HTTP protocol.
Just add the HTTParty gem to your Gemfile
:
gem 'httparty'
To configure it, you need to set the url
option, like this:
Rails.application.config.middleware.use ExceptionNotification::Rack,
:email => {
:email_prefix => "[PREFIX] ",
:sender_address => %{"notifier" <notifier@example.com>},
:exception_recipients => %w{exceptions@example.com}
},
:webhook => {
:url => 'http://domain.com:5555/hubot/path'
}
By default, the WebhookNotifier will call the URLs using the POST method. But, you can change this using the http_method
option.
Rails.application.config.middleware.use ExceptionNotification::Rack,
:email => {
:email_prefix => "[PREFIX] ",
:sender_address => %{"notifier" <notifier@example.com>},
:exception_recipients => %w{exceptions@example.com}
},
:webhook => {
:url => 'http://domain.com:5555/hubot/path',
:http_method => :get
}
Besides the url
and http_method
options, all the other options are passed directly to HTTParty. Thus, if the HTTP server requires authentication, you can include the following options:
Rails.application.config.middleware.use ExceptionNotification::Rack,
:email => {
:email_prefix => "[PREFIX] ",
:sender_address => %{"notifier" <notifier@example.com>},
:exception_recipients => %w{exceptions@example.com}
},
:webhook => {
:url => 'http://domain.com:5555/hubot/path',
:basic_auth => {
:username => 'alice',
:password => 'password'
}
}
For more HTTParty options, check out the documentation.
This notifier sends notifications to an IRC channel using the carrier-pigeon gem.
Just add the carrier-pigeon gem to your Gemfile
:
gem 'carrier-pigeon'
To configure it, you need to set at least the 'domain' option, like this:
Rails.application.config.middleware.use ExceptionNotification::Rack,
:email => {
:email_prefix => "[PREFIX] ",
:sender_address => %{"notifier" <notifier@example.com>},
:exception_recipients => %w{exceptions@example.com}
},
:irc => {
:domain => 'irc.example.com'
}
There are several other options, which are described below. For example, to use ssl and a password, add a prefix, post to the '#log' channel, and include recipients in the message (so that they will be notified), your configuration might look like this:
Rails.application.config.middleware.use ExceptionNotification::Rack,
:irc => {
:domain => 'irc.example.com',
:nick => 'BadNewsBot',
:password => 'secret',
:port => 6697,
:channel => '#log',
:ssl => true,
:prefix => '[Exception Notification]',
:recipients => ['peter', 'michael', 'samir']
}
String, required
The domain name of your IRC server.
String, optional
The message will appear from this nick. Default : 'ExceptionNotifierBot'.
String, optional
Password for your IRC server.
String, optional
Port your IRC server is listening on. Default : 6667.
String, optional
Message will appear in this channel. Default : '#log'.
Boolean, optional
Send a notice. Default : false.
Boolean, optional
Whether to use SSL. Default : false.
Boolean, optional
Join a channel. Default : false.
Array of strings, optional
Nicks to include in the message. Default: []
This notifier sends notifications to a slack channel using the slack-notifier gem.
Just add the slack-notifier gem to your Gemfile
:
gem 'slack-notifier'
To configure it, you need to set at least the 'webhook_url' option, like this:
Rails.application.config.middleware.use ExceptionNotification::Rack,
:email => {
:email_prefix => "[PREFIX] ",
:sender_address => %{"notifier" <notifier@example.com>},
:exception_recipients => %w{exceptions@example.com}
},
:slack => {
:webhook_url => "[Your webhook url]",
:channel => "#exceptions",
:additional_parameters => {
:icon_url => "http://image.jpg",
:mrkdwn => true
}
}
The slack notification will include any data saved under env["exception_notifier.exception_data"]
. If you find this too verbose, you can determine to exclude certain information by doing the following:
Rails.application.config.middleware.use ExceptionNotification::Rack,
:slack => {
:webhook_url => "[Your webhook url]",
:channel => "#exceptions",
:additional_parameters => {
:icon_url => "http://image.jpg",
:mrkdwn => true
},
:ignore_data_if => lambda {|key, value|
"#{key}" == 'key_to_ignore' || value.is_a?(ClassToBeIgnored)
}
}
Any evaluation to true
will cause the key / value pair not be be sent along to Slack.
String, required
The Incoming WebHook URL on slack.
String, optional
Message will appear in this channel. Defaults to the channel you set as such on slack.
String, optional
Username of the bot. Defaults to the name you set as such on slack
String, optional
Custom hook name. See slack-notifier for more information. Default: 'incoming-webhook'
Hash of strings, optional
Contains additional payload for a message (e.g avatar, attachments, etc). See slack-notifier for more information.. Default: '{}'
Simply put, notifiers are objects which respond to #call(exception, options)
method. Thus, a lambda can be used as a notifier as follow:
ExceptionNotifier.add_notifier :custom_notifier_name,
->(exception, options) { puts "Something goes wrong: #{exception.message}"}
More advanced users or third-party framework developers, also can create notifiers to be shipped in gems and take advantage of ExceptionNotification's Notifier API to standardize the various solutions out there. For this, beyond the #call(exception, options)
method, the notifier class MUST BE defined under the ExceptionNotifier namespace and its name sufixed by Notifier
, e.g: ExceptionNotifier::SimpleNotifier.
Define the custom notifier:
module ExceptionNotifier
class SimpleNotifier
def initialize(options)
# do something with the options...
end
def call(exception, options={})
# send the notification
end
end
end
Using it:
Rails.application.config.middleware.use ExceptionNotification::Rack,
:email => {
:email_prefix => "[PREFIX] ",
:sender_address => %{"notifier" <notifier@example.com>},
:exception_recipients => %w{exceptions@example.com}
},
:simple => {
# simple notifier options
}
You can choose to ignore certain exceptions, which will make ExceptionNotification avoid sending notifications for those specified. There are three ways of specifying which exceptions to ignore:
-
:ignore_exceptions
- By exception class (i.e. ignore RecordNotFound ones) -
:ignore_crawlers
- From crawler (i.e. ignore ones originated by Googlebot) -
:ignore_if
- Custom (i.e. ignore exceptions that satisfy some condition)
Array of strings, default: %w{ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound AbstractController::ActionNotFound ActionController::RoutingError ActionController::UnknownFormat}
Ignore specified exception types. To achieve that, you should use the :ignore_exceptions
option, like this:
Rails.application.config.middleware.use ExceptionNotification::Rack,
:ignore_exceptions => ['ActionView::TemplateError'] + ExceptionNotifier.ignored_exceptions,
:email => {
:email_prefix => "[PREFIX] ",
:sender_address => %{"notifier" <notifier@example.com>},
:exception_recipients => %w{exceptions@example.com}
}
The above will make ExceptionNotifier ignore a TemplateError exception, plus the ones ignored by default.
Array of strings, default: []
In some cases you may want to avoid getting notifications from exceptions made by crawlers. To prevent sending those unwanted notifications, use the :ignore_crawlers
option like this:
Rails.application.config.middleware.use ExceptionNotification::Rack,
:ignore_crawlers => %w{Googlebot bingbot},
:email => {
:email_prefix => "[PREFIX] ",
:sender_address => %{"notifier" <notifier@example.com>},
:exception_recipients => %w{exceptions@example.com}
}
Lambda, default: nil
Last but not least, you can ignore exceptions based on a condition. Take a look:
Rails.application.config.middleware.use ExceptionNotification::Rack,
:ignore_if => ->(env, exception) { exception.message =~ /^Couldn't find Page with ID=/ },
:email => {
:email_prefix => "[PREFIX] ",
:sender_address => %{"notifier" <notifier@example.com>},
:exception_recipients => %w{exceptions@example.com},
}
You can make use of both the environment and the exception inside the lambda to decide wether to avoid or not sending the notification.
Some rack apps (Rails in particular) utilize the "X-Cascade" header to pass the request-handling responsibility to the next middleware in the stack.
Rails' routing middleware uses this strategy, rather than raising an exception, to handle routing errors (e.g. 404s); to be notified whenever a 404 occurs, set this option to "false."
Boolean, default: true
Set to false to trigger notifications when another rack middleware sets the "X-Cascade" header to "pass."
If you want to send notifications from a background process like DelayedJob, you should use the notify_exception
method like this:
begin
some code...
rescue => e
ExceptionNotifier.notify_exception(e)
end
You can include information about the background process that created the error by including a data parameter:
begin
some code...
rescue => exception
ExceptionNotifier.notify_exception(exception,
:data => {:worker => worker.to_s, :queue => queue, :payload => payload})
end
If your controller action manually handles an error, the notifier will never be run. To manually notify of an error you can do something like the following:
rescue_from Exception, :with => :server_error
def server_error(exception)
# Whatever code that handles the exception
ExceptionNotifier.notify_exception(exception,
:env => request.env, :data => {:message => "was doing something wrong"})
end
Since his first version, ExceptionNotification was just a simple rack middleware. But, the version 4.0.0 introduced the option to use it as a Rails engine. In order to use ExceptionNotification as an engine, just run the following command from the terminal:
rails g exception_notification:install
This command generates an initialize file (config/initializers/exception_notification.rb
) where you can customize your configurations.
Instead of manually calling background notifications foreach job/worker, you can configure ExceptionNotification to do this automatically. For this, run:
rails g exception_notification:install --resque
or
rails g exception_notification:install --sidekiq
For v4.0.1, see this tag:
http://github.com/smartinez87/exception_notification/tree/v4.0.1
For v4.0.0, see this tag:
http://github.com/smartinez87/exception_notification/tree/v4.0.0
For v3.0.1, see this tag:
http://github.com/smartinez87/exception_notification/tree/v3.0.1
For v3.0.0, see this tag:
http://github.com/smartinez87/exception_notification/tree/v3.0.0
For previous releases, visit:
https://github.com/smartinez87/exception_notification/tags
If you are running Rails 2.3 then see the branch for that:
http://github.com/smartinez87/exception_notification/tree/2-3-stable
If you are running pre-rack Rails then see this tag:
http://github.com/smartinez87/exception_notification/tree/pre-2-3
Here's the list of issues we're currently working on.
To contribute, please read first the Contributing Guide.
Copyright (c) 2005 Jamis Buck, released under the MIT license.