Zenbox

This is the notifier gem for integrating apps with Zenbox.

When an uncaught exception occurs, Zenbox will POST the relevant data to the Zenbox server specified in your environment.

Help

For help with using Zenbox and this notifier visit our support site.

For discussion of Zenbox development check out the mailing list.

For SSL verification see the Resources.

Rails Installation

Rails 3.x

Add the zenbox gem to your Gemfile. In Gemfile:

gem "zenbox"

Then from your project's RAILS_ROOT, and in your development environment, run:

bundle install
rails generate zenbox --api-key your_key_here

That's it!

The generator creates a file under config/initializers/zenbox.rb configuring Zenbox with your API key. This file should be checked into your version control system so that it is deployed to your staging and production environments.

Rails 2.x

Add the zenbox gem to your app. In config/environment.rb:

config.gem 'zenbox'

or if you are using bundler:

gem 'zenbox', :require => 'zenbox/rails'

Then from your project's RAILS_ROOT, and in your development environment, run:

rake gems:install
rake gems:unpack GEM=zenbox
script/generate zenbox --api-key your_key_here

As always, if you choose not to vendor the zenbox gem, make sure every server you deploy to has the gem installed or your application won't start.

Upgrading From Earlier Versions of Zenbox

If you're currently using the plugin version (if you have a vendor/plugins/hoptoad_notifier directory, you are), you'll need to perform a few extra steps when upgrading to the gem version.

Add the zenbox gem to your app. In config/environment.rb:

config.gem 'zenbox'

Remove the plugin:

rm -rf vendor/plugins/hoptoad_notifier

Make sure the following line DOES NOT appear in your ApplicationController file:

include HoptoadNotifier::Catcher

If it does, remove it. The new catcher is automatically included by the gem version of Zenbox.

Before running the zenbox generator, you need to find your project's API key. Log in to your account at zenbox.io, and click on the "Projects" button. Then, find your project in the list, and click on its name. In the left-hand column, you'll see an "Edit this project" button. Click on that to get your project's API key. If you accidentally use your personal API api_key, you will get API key not found errors, and exceptions will not be stored by the Zenbox service.

Then from your project's RAILS_ROOT, run:

rake gems:install
script/generate zenbox --api-key your_key_here

Once installed, you should vendor the zenbox gem.

rake gems:unpack GEM=zenbox

As always, if you choose not to vendor the zenbox gem, make sure every server you deploy to has the gem installed or your application won't start.

Upgrading from Earlier Versions of the Hoptoad Gem (with config.gem)

If you're currently using the gem version of the hoptoad_notifier and have a version of Rails that uses config.gem (in the 2.x series), there is a step or two that you need to do to upgrade. First, you need to remove the old version of the gem from vendor/gems:

rm -rf vendor/gems/hoptoad_notifier-X.X.X

Then you must remove the hoptoad_notifier_tasks.rake file from lib:

rm lib/tasks/hoptoad_notifier_tasks.rake

You can then continue to install normally. If you don't remove the rake file, you will be unable to unpack this gem (Rails will think it's part of the framework).

You can test that Zenbox is working in your production environment by using this rake task (from RAILS_ROOT):

rake zenbox:test

If everything is configured properly, that task will send a notice to Zenbox which will be visible immediately.

Removing hoptoad_notifier

in your ApplicationController, REMOVE this line:

include HoptoadNotifiable

In your config/environment* files, remove all references to HoptoadNotifier

Remove the vendor/plugins/hoptoad_notifier directory.

Remove hoptoad_notifier plugin

Remove the vendor/plugins/hoptoad_notifier directory before installing the gem, or run:

script/plugin remove hoptoad_notifier

Non-rails apps using Bundler

There is an undocumented dependency in activesupport where the i18n gem is required only if the core classes extensions are used (active_support/core_ext). This can lead to a confusing LoadError exception when using Zenbox. Until this is fixed in activesupport the workaround is to add i18n to the Gemfile for your Sinatra/Rack/pure ruby application:

gem 'i18n'
gem 'zenbox'

Rack

In order to use zenbox in a non-Rails rack app, just load zenbox, configure your API key, and use the Zenbox::Rack middleware:

require 'rack'
require 'zenbox'

Zenbox.configure do |config|
  config.api_key = 'my_api_key'
end

app = Rack::Builder.app do
  run lambda { |env| raise "Rack down" }
end

use Zenbox::Rack
run app

Sinatra

Using zenbox in a Sinatra app is just like a Rack app:

require 'sinatra'
require 'zenbox'

Zenbox.configure do |config|
  config.api_key = 'my API key'
end

use Zenbox::Rack

get '/' do
  raise "Sinatra has left the building"
end

Usage

For the most part, Zenbox works for itself.

It intercepts the exception middleware calls, sends notifications and continues the middleware call chain.

If you want to log arbitrary things which you've rescued yourself from a controller, you can do something like this:

...
rescue => ex
  notify_zenbox(ex)
  flash[:failure] = 'Encryptions could not be rerouted, try again.'
end
...

The #notify_zenbox call will send the notice over to Zenbox for later analysis. While in your controllers you use the notify_zenbox method, anywhere else in your code, use Zenbox.notify.

To perform custom error processing after Zenbox has been notified, define the instance method #rescue_action_in_public_without_zenbox(exception) in your controller.

Informing the User

The zenbox gem is capable of telling the user information about the error that just happened via the user_information option. They can give this error number in bug reports, for example. By default, if your 500.html contains the text

<!-- AIRBRAKE ERROR -->

then that comment will be replaced with the text "Zenbox Error [errnum]". You can modify the text of the informer by setting config.user_information. Zenbox will replace "error_id }" with the ID of the error that is returned from Zenbox.

Zenbox.configure do |config|
...
  config.user_information = "<p>Tell the devs that it was <strong>{{ error_id }}</strong>'s fault.</p>"
end

You can also turn the middleware that handles this completely off by setting config.user_information to false.

Note that this feature is reading the error id from env['zenbox.error_id']. When the exception is caught automatically in a controller, Zenbox sets that value. If you're, however, calling the Zenbox methods like Zenbox#notify or Zenbox#notify_or_ignore, please make sure you set that value. So the proper way of calling the "manual" methods would be env['zenbox.error_id'] = Zenbox.notify_or_ignore(...).

Tracking deployments in Zenbox

Paying Zenbox plans support the ability to track deployments of your application in Zenbox. By notifying Zenbox of your application deployments, all errors are resolved when a deploy occurs, so that you'll be notified again about any errors that reoccur after a deployment.

Additionally, it's possible to review the errors in Zenbox that occurred before and after a deploy.

When Zenbox is installed as a gem, you need to add

require 'zenbox/capistrano'

to your deploy.rb

If you don't use Capistrano, then you can use the following rake task from your deployment process to notify Zenbox:

rake zenbox:deploy TO=#{rails_env} REVISION=#{current_revision} REPO=#{repository} USER=#{local_user}

Going beyond exceptions

You can also pass a hash to Zenbox.notify method and store whatever you want, not just an exception. And you can also use it anywhere, not just in controllers:

begin
  params = {
    # params that you pass to a method that can throw an exception
  }
  my_unpredicable_method(params)
rescue => e
  Zenbox.notify(
    :error_class   => "Special Error",
    :error_message => "Special Error: #{e.message}",
    :parameters    => params
  )
end

While in your controllers you use the notify_zenbox method, anywhere else in your code, use Zenbox.notify. Zenbox will get all the information about the error itself. As for a hash, these are the keys you should pass:

:error_class - Use this to group similar errors together. When Zenbox catches an exception it sends the class name of that exception object.
:error_message - This is the title of the error you see in the errors list. For exceptions it is "#exceptionexception.classexception.class.name: #exceptionexception.message"
:parameters - While there are several ways to send additional data to Zenbox, passing a Hash as :parameters as in the example above is the most common use case. When Zenbox catches an exception in a controller, the actual HTTP client request parameters are sent using this key.

Zenbox merges the hash you pass with these default options:

{
  :api_key       => Zenbox.api_key,
  :error_message => 'Notification',
  :backtrace     => caller,
  :parameters    => {},
  :session       => {}
}

You can override any of those parameters.

Sending shell environment variables when "Going beyond exceptions"

One common request we see is to send shell environment variables along with manual exception notification. We recommend sending them along with CGI data or Rack environment (:cgi_data or :rack_env keys, respectively.)

See Zenbox::Notice#initialize in lib/zenbox/notice.rb for more details.

Filtering

You can specify a whitelist of errors that Zenbox will not report on. Use this feature when you are so apathetic to certain errors that you don't want them even logged.

This filter will only be applied to automatic notifications, not manual notifications (when #notify is called directly).

Zenbox ignores the following exceptions by default:

ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound
ActionController::RoutingError
ActionController::InvalidAuthenticityToken
CGI::Session::CookieStore::TamperedWithCookie
ActionController::UnknownAction
AbstractController::ActionNotFound
Mongoid::Errors::DocumentNotFound

To ignore errors in addition to those, specify their names in your Zenbox configuration block.

Zenbox.configure do |config|
  config.api_key      = '1234567890abcdef'
  config.ignore       << "ActiveRecord::IgnoreThisError"
end

To ignore only certain errors (and override the defaults), use the #ignore_only attribute.

Zenbox.configure do |config|
  config.api_key      = '1234567890abcdef'
  config.ignore_only  = ["ActiveRecord::IgnoreThisError"] # or [] to ignore no exceptions.
end

To ignore certain user agents, add in the #ignore_user_agent attribute as a string or regexp:

Zenbox.configure do |config|
  config.api_key      = '1234567890abcdef'
  config.ignore_user_agent  << /Ignored/
  config.ignore_user_agent << 'IgnoredUserAgent'
end

To ignore exceptions based on other conditions, use #ignore_by_filter:

Zenbox.configure do |config|
  config.api_key      = '1234567890abcdef'
  config.ignore_by_filter do |exception_data|
    true if exception_data[:error_class] == "RuntimeError"
  end
end

To replace sensitive information sent to the Zenbox service with [FILTERED] use #params_filters:

Zenbox.configure do |config|
  config.api_key      = '1234567890abcdef'
  config.params_filters << "credit_card_number"
end

Note that, when rescuing exceptions within an ActionController method, zenbox will reuse filters specified by #filter_parameter_logging.

Testing

When you run your tests, you might notice that the Zenbox service is recording notices generated using #notify when you don't expect it to. You can use code like this in your test_helper.rb or spec_helper.rb files to redefine that method so those errors are not reported while running tests.

module Zenbox
  def self.notify(exception, opts = {})
    # do nothing.
  end
end

Proxy Support

The notifier supports using a proxy, if your server is not able to directly reach the Zenbox servers. To configure the proxy settings, added the following information to your Zenbox configuration block.

Zenbox.configure do |config|
  config.proxy_host = proxy.host.com
  config.proxy_port = 4038
  config.proxy_user = foo # optional
  config.proxy_pass = bar # optional

Supported Rails versions

See SUPPORTED_RAILS_VERSIONS for a list of official supported versions of Rails.

Please open up a support ticket ( http://help.zenbox.io ) or submit a new github issue if you're using a version of Rails that is listed above and the notifier is not working properly.

Javascript Notifer

To automatically include the Javascript node on every page, use this helper method from your layouts:

<%= zenbox_javascript_notifier %>

It's important to insert this very high in the markup, above all other javascript. Example:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf8">
    <%= zenbox_javascript_notifier %>
    <!-- more javascript -->
  </head>
  <body>
    ...
  </body>
</html>

This helper will automatically use the API key, host, and port specified in the configuration.

The Javascript notifier tends to send much more notifications than the base Rails project. If you want to receive them into a separate Zenbox project, specify its API key in the js_api_key option.

config.js_api_key = 'another-projects-api-key'

To test the Javascript notifier in development environment, overwrite (temporarily) the development_environments option:

Zenbox.configure do |config|
  # ...
  config.development_environments = []
end

Development

See TESTING.md for instructions on how to run the tests.

Credits

Zenbox is maintained and funded by zenbox.io

Thank you to all the contributors!

The names and logos for Zenbox, thoughtbot are trademarks of their respective holders.