Rollbar

Technical Implementations

Rollbar

Rollbar is an error-logging service we use through our web apps to view and debug errors in real-time. The implementation is pretty easy and supports a large number of languages. There are two types of implementations for Rollbar, browser and server.

General Needs

Implementing Rollbar generally requires the inclusion of the respective rollbar module (browser/server) and then initializing the rollbar object with account credentials.

• Access Token

• Browser Token

• Environment (Staging/Production)

• Payload (data to be analyzed)

Browser Setup DOC

Browser implementation tracks a user's actions through the Application/Webpage (DOM) and reports a significant amount of steps before the error occurs; displaying the output (DOM/text) the user sees when the error is triggered. In our WebApps we include the rollbar in the module that constructs the page's HTML structure, ie. services-js/[service-name]/pages/_document.tsx. A browser implementation looks like this:

<script>
var _rollbarConfig = {
    accessToken: "POST_CLIENT_ITEM_ACCESS_TOKEN",
    captureUncaught: true,
    captureUnhandledRejections: true,
    payload: {
        environment: "production",
        client: {
            javascript: {
                source_map_enabled: true,
                code_version: "${rollbarVersion || buildId}",
            }
        },
    }
};
// Rollbar Snippet
// .... code
// End Rollbar Snippet
</script>

Server Setup DOC

import Rollbar from 'rollbar';
const Rollbar = require('rollbar');
const rollbar = new Rollbar({
  accessToken: process.env.ROLLBAR_ACCESS_TOKEN,
  captureUncaught: true,
  captureUnhandledRejections: true,
  payload: {
    environment: process.env.ROLLBAR_ENVIRONMENT || process.env.NODE_ENV,
  },
});

try {
  someCode();
} catch (e) {
  rollbar.error(e);
}

Our code base abstracts the server (Hapi.js) implementation on a top layer module at modules-js/hapi-common/src/hapi-common.ts, here it expands the reporting tool to handle 404 errors as well among other things. Although reporting an error only requires the error message/payload, rollbar.error(error) going forward we should be more verbose in the errors we log; rollbar.error(e, request.raw.req)

Ex.

// Server Code
server.route({
  method: 'POST',
  path: '/stripe',
  handler: async request => {
    try {
      someCode();
    } catch (e) {
      rollbar.error(e, request.raw.req);
      throw e;
    }
  },
});

Server Usage

// if you have a request object (or a function that returns one), pass it in
rollbar.error(e, request);

// pass a request and a callback
rollbar.error(e, request, callback);

// you can also pass a callback
rollbar.error(e, request, {level: "info"}, callback);

Single Page Application (SPA)

Our web apps are Single Page Apps, SPAs, meaning that it all runs off of the same front-end code even when the URL subpage and parameters change. Since we include Rollbar at the top of the Application it is available through the browser's window DOM object or by including it as a module in specific sections. DOM window is sufficient for our needs so the example below covers how to raise an error from within the app.

try {
  someCode();
} catch(e) {
  if ((window as any).rollbar) {
    (window as any).rollbar.error(e);
  }
}

PHP and Drupal

Rollbar has an implementation for PHP, like others it's straightforward to implement, but it is missing a documented implementation for Drupal. There is a Rollbar module on Drupal.org that is installed with composer but this will require more insight/research.

PHP Implementation

In Composer

{
    "require": {
        "rollbar/rollbar": "^3"
    }
}

Setup

<?php
use Rollbar\Rollbar;

$config = array(
    // required
    'access_token' => 'POST_SERVER_ITEM_ACCESS_TOKEN',
    // optional - environment name. any string will do.
    'environment' => 'production',
    // optional - directory path your code is in. used for linking stack traces.
    'root' => '/Users/brian/www/myapp'
    // optional - the code version. e.g. git commit SHA or release tag
    'code_version' => '27f47021038a159c5aa9bbb9f98ce47e55914404'
);
Rollbar::init($config);

Send an Error and a Message

<?php
use Rollbar\Rollbar;
use Rollbar\Payload\Level;

// installs global error and exception handlers
Rollbar::init(
    array(
        'access_token' => ROLLBAR_TEST_TOKEN,
        'environment' => 'production',
        'code_version' => '1.0.0'
    )
);

try {
    throw new \Exception('test exception');
} catch (\Exception $e) {
    Rollbar::log(Level::ERROR, $e);
}

// Message at level 'info'
Rollbar::log(Level::INFO, 'testing info level')

Set up your Rollbar account, configure projects

Above we went through how to set up Rollbar in the codebase, however, we also need to set up a project for each implementation in the Rollbar dashboard.

1. Login into the account

2. Create New Project

3. Invite team members

4. Setup Notifications - Determine if you are using Slack or email, etc

5. Integrate with Source Control Provider - We have a couple of apps (DBConnector) that are hosted in AWS, for this we'll need to set it up using this doc
6. Setup Versions and Deploy controls - Setup a way to notify Rollbar of an AWS deployment (Lambda)