opbeatOpbeat
Log errors and stacktraces in Opbeat from within your Node.js applications. Includes middleware support for Connect and Express.
- Installation
- Basic Usage
- Configuration
- Uncaught exceptions
- Advanced usage
- Integrations
- Release tracking
- Compatibility
- Credit
- License
Important: If you've been using version 0.3.x or earlier, please read our upgrade guide.
Compatibility: Make sure you read our Compatibility Guide if you use New Relic, longjohn or other modules that also captures uncaught exceptions or modifies the stacktraces.
Installation
npm install opbeatBasic Usage
To get started just require and initialize the Opbeat module in the top of your app's main module. Out of the box this will catch unhandled exceptions automatically.
var opbeat = require('opbeat')({
appId: '...',
organizationId: '...',
secretToken: '...'
});If you want to manually send an error to Opbeat, use the
captureError() function:
opbeat.captureError(new Error('Ups, something broke'));Configuration
When you've required the Opbeat module you can supply an optional options object to configure the client.
require('opbeat')({
appId: '...',
organizationId: '...',
secretToken: '...',
...
});The available options are listed below, but can alternatively be set via the listed environment variables.
appId
- Type: String
- Env:
OPBEAT_APP_ID
Your Opbeat app id. Required unless set via the OPBEAT_APP_ID
environment variable.
organizationId
- Type: String
- Env:
OPBEAT_ORGANIZATION_ID
Your Opbeat orgainization id. Required unless set via the
OPBEAT_ORGANIZATION_ID environment variable.
secretToken
- Type: String
- Env:
OPBEAT_SECRET_TOKEN
Your secret Opbeat token. Required unless set via the
OPBEAT_SECRET_TOKEN environment variable.
active
- Type: Boolean
- Default:
true - Env:
OPBEAT_ACTIVE
A boolean specifying if errors should be collected by the Opbeat client
or not. Normally you would not want to capture errors in your
development or testing environments. If you are using the NODE_ENV
envrionment variable, you can use this to determine the state:
var options = {
active: process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production'
};hostname
- Type: String
- Default: OS hostname
- Env:
OPBEAT_HOSTNAME
The OS hostname is automatically logged along with all errors (you can see it under the "Environment" tab on each error. If you want to overwrite this, use this option.
clientLogLevel
- Type: String
- Default:
'info' - Env:
OPBEAT_CLIENT_LOG_LEVEL
Set the verbosity level the Opbeat client. Note that this does not have any influence on what types of errors that are sent to Opbeat. This only controls how chatty the Opbeat client are in your logs.
Possible levels are: debug, info, warn, error and fatal.
logger
- Type: object
Set a custom logger, e.g. bunyan:
require('opbeat')({
logger: require('bunyan')({ level: 'info' })
});If no custom logger is provided, Opbeat will use its built-in logger which will log to STDOUT and STDERR depending on the log level.
The logger should expose the following functions: debug, info,
warn, error and fatal.
Note that if a custom logger is provided, the clientLogLevel option
will be ignored.
captureExceptions
- Type: Boolean
- Default:
true - Env:
OPBEAT_CAPTURE_EXCEPTIONS
Whether or not the Opbeat client should monitor for uncaught exceptions and sent them to Opbeat automatically.
stackTraceLimit
- Type: Number
- Default:
Infinity - Env:
OPBEAT_STACK_TRACE_LIMIT
Setting it to 0 will disable stacktrace collection. Any finite integer
value will be used as the maximum number of frames to collect. Setting
it to Infinity means that all frames will be collected.
Events
The client emits two events: logged and error.
opbeat.on('logged', function (url) {
console.log('Yay, it worked! View online at: ' + url);
});
opbeat.on('error', function (err) {
console.log('Something went wrong. The error was not logged!');
});
opbeat.captureError('Boom');Uncaught exceptions
The client captures uncaught exceptions automatically and reports them
to Opbeat. To disable this, set the configuration option
captureExceptions to false when initializing the Opbeat client.
You can enable capturing of uncaught exceptions later by calling the
handleUncaughtExceptions() function. This also gives you the option to
add a callback which will be called once an uncaught exception have been
sent to Opbeat.
opbeat.handleUncaughtExceptions([callback]);If you don't specify a callback, the node process is terminated automatically when an uncaught exception have been captured and sent to Opbeat.
It is
recommended
that you don't leave the process running after receiving an
uncaughtException, so if you are using the optional callback, remember
to terminate the node process:
var opbeat = require('opbeat')();
opbeat.handleUncaughtExceptions(function (err, url) {
// Do your own stuff... and then exit:
process.exit(1);
});The callback is called after the event has been sent to the Opbeat server with the following arguments:
err- the captured exceptionurl- the URL of where you can find the sent error on Opbeat
Advanced usage
HTTP requests
You can specify an optional options argument as the 2nd argument to
.captureError(). Besides the options described in the the metedata
section, you can use the options to associate the error with
an HTTP request:
opbeat.captureError(err, {
request: req // an instance of http.IncomingMessage
});This will log the URL that was requested, the HTTP headers, cookies and other useful details to help you debug the error.
Callback
The captureError() function can also be given an optional callback
which will be called once the error have been sent to Opbeat:
opbeat.captureError(error, function (opbeatErr, url) {
// ...
});The callback is called with two arguments:
opbeatErr- set if something went wrong while trying to log the errorurl- the URL of where you can find the sent error on Opbeat
Non-exceptions
Instead of an Error object, you can log a plain text error-message:
opbeat.captureError('Something happened!');This will also be logged as an error in Opbeat, but will not be associated with an exception.
Parameterized messages
If the message string contains state or time-specific data, Opbeat will not always recognize multiple errors as belonging to the same group, since the message text differs. To group these kind of messages, send the message as a parameterized message:
opbeat.captureError({
message: 'Timeout exeeded by %d seconds',
params: [seconds]
});Metadata
To ease debugging it's possible to send some extra data with each
error you send to Opbeat. The Opbeat API supports a lot of different
metadata fields, most of which are automatlically managed by the
opbeat node client. But if you wish you can supply some extra details
using client_supplied_id, extra, user or query. If you want to
know more about all the fields, you should take a look at the full
Opbeat API docs.
To supply any of these extra fields, use the optional options argument
when calling opbeat.captureError().
Here are some examples:
// Sending some extra details about the user
opbeat.captureError(error, {
user: {
is_authenticated: true,
id: 'unique_id',
username: 'foo',
email: 'foo@example.com'
}
});
// Sending some abitrary extra details using the `extra` field
opbeat.captureError(error, {
extra: {
some_important_metric: 'foobar'
}
});Singleton access
Don't waste time initializing the Opbeat client more than once. If you need access the client in multiple files, just create an opbeat.js file somewhere in your project, initialize Opbeat in there and export it:
// opbeat.js
module.exports = require('opbeat')({
appId: '...',
organizationId: '...',
secretToken: '...'
});Integrations
Connect/Express middleware
The Opbeat middleware can be used as-is with either Connect or Express in the same way. Take note that in your middlewares, Opbeat must appear after your main handler to pick up any errors that may result from handling a request.
Connect
var opbeat = require('opbeat')();
var connect = require('connect');
var app = connect();
// your regular middleware:
// app.use(...)
// app.use(...)
// your main HTTP handler
app.use(function (req, res, next) {
throw new Error('Broke!');
});
// add Opbeat in the bottom of the middleware stack
app.use(opbeat.middleware.connect());
app.listen(3000);Express
var opbeat = require('opbeat')();
var app = require('express').createServer();
app.use(opbeat.middleware.express());
app.get('/', function mainHandler(req, res) {
throw new Error('Broke!');
});
app.listen(3000);Note: opbeat.middleware.express or opbeat.middleware.connect
must be added to the middleware stack before any other error
handling middlewares or there's a chance that the error will never get
to Opbeat.
Release tracking
Though Opbeat provides other means of handling release tracking, you can also use this client to do the same.
Use the trackDeployment() function with the optional options and
callback arguments:
opbeat.trackDeployment(options, callback);Options:
path- An optional path on the filesystem where the git repo can be found (defaults to the current working directory)rev- An optional full git revision (will try to guess therevbased on thepath)status-completed(default) ormachine-completed. Ifmachine-completedis specified, thehostnameattribute must be presentbranch- Optional git branch (will try to guess therevbased on thepath)hostname- Optional hostname of the server that was updated. Required ifstatus=machine-completed
Callback:
Will be called when the release has been tracked. Note that the
callback will not be called upon errors. Listen instead for the error
events.
Compatibility
The module is tested against Node.js v0.10 and above. Previous versions of Node.js is not supported.
Credit
All credit for the original work go out to the original contributors and the main author Matt Robenolt.
License
BSD