Errors are Best When Emailed... Said Nobody Ever

Exceptions happen. Bugless code is a myth.

I hope I don't have to convince many people that sending every exception via email is not the greatest idea since sliced bread. "Sure, it sucks... But what else can I do?" would be a natural response. I've been there. How else can you keep track of exactly what's going wrong in your application? How else will you be alerted when something goes wrong?

For many of you, email probably plays the role of courier between your application and your bug database (JIRA, Bugzilla, etc). But that's not what email was intended for, and to be honest, it's a poor tool for the job, so it does a crappy job.

The truth is that there are better options, but nobody can blame you for not knowing about them... Until now. I'm going to show you the two most popular options available for CF, how to use them to get useful analytical data back about your application's health, or lack thereof, and how you can extend the concept beyond just your CFML. And the real surprise is that it's easy.

Transcript

1. Errors Are Best When Emailed... @AdamTuttle fusiongrokker.com You Are Here
2. Errors Are Best When Emailed... @AdamTuttle fusiongrokker.com Said Nobody Ever You Are Here
4. I’m @AdamTuttle
5. That’s Me!
6. Meet Dylan
7. This is Dylan’s Email
8. This is Dylan’s Email
9. 100 Errors / day
10. 100 Errors / day 12 EPH 1 every 5 minutes
11. Unreasonable Demands
12. Why is this a problem?
13. Why is this a problem?
14. Could Technology Help???
15. Error Logging & Analytics!
16. But I don’t get that many error emails...
17. • Everyone gets the email, but nobody looks at it • Shared team email account that interrupts everyone • Dedicated inbox manager; rotating if you’re lucky Workflow
18. • Can’t get data out Export
19. Data?
20. How many errors have you had this month?
21. ...this week?
22. ...today?
23. ...in the last 6 hours?
24. ...in the last 30 min?
25. What’s your most frequent error?
26. How many unique errors?
27. Has the frequency of any single unique error gone up recently?
28. Smarter collection; Smarter analytics
29. New unique error
30. Frequency exceeds threshold
31. Error severity code
32. Heartbeat Failure
33. Tell me about these apps...
34. • Errplane.com • Raygun.io • Airbrake.io • loggly.com Cloud Services ($)
35. • BugLogHQ - Oscar Arevalo • Hoth - Aaron Greenlee • Honorable Mention: IronGate Self-hosted, CFML Powered
36. try { var x = 42 / 0; } catch (any e) { thing.log( e ); } Easy to implement
37. Application.cfc function onError( exception ) { thing.log( exception ); } Easy to implement
38. How do they match up against each other?
39. • Logs to text files • Built specifically & only for CF Exceptions • Included Report UI targets ColdBox • Only local machine • Star Wars Reference Hoth
40. Logs to a database Supports 1 custom field, flexibility for non- CFML errors Report UI with pretty* graphs & filtering REST API for remote access RSS log available *as pretty as CFChart gets, anyway BugLogHQ Built-in fallback to email
41. BugLogHQ Hoth Exception Details
42. Hoth BugLogHQ Always emails you when a previously- unknown exception occurs Notification Options Customizable Alerts: discard firstMessageAlert frequencyAlert heartbeatMonitor more...
43. Hoth Shows # of occurrences BugLogHQ Statistical Analysis
44. And the winner is...
45. Let’s Look At My Data
46. > Fun with data!
47. Custom Bot that monitors RSS feed for new entries and sends me an IM when anything is added. Node.js Heroku free tier Free Redis addon for Heroku OSCAR, redis, feedparser libs <100 lines of my JavaScript Build your own goodies
48. Same bot, but for HipChat
49. BLHQ Custom Alerts
50. Limited only by your imagination
51. Now Dylan can focus!
52. In conclusion...