Rails users: What exception notification software do you use?

Question

I have seen Ryan Bates talk about exception_logger and exception notification. Are there any other good ones to consider? What do you like and dislike about these?

Also, do these exception notifiers log exceptions if you catch them?

Thanks!

Answer 1

I have been using ExceptionLogger since one year. I didn't like exception_notification because I don't like to receive tons of email. Also, ExceptionLogger is somehow an improved version of ExceptionNotification.

Unfortunately ExceptionLogger hasn't been updated since a while. I recently started to work on a custom tool that takes advantage of Rails 2.3 Engine feature.

Also there are a couple of webapps dedicated to solve this problem:

• Exceptional
• Hoptoad

Answer 2

I use ExceptionLogger as well.

If you catch aka handle an exception it is really no longer an exception, you could as well log it yourself.

Answer 3

I would highly recommend using Hoptoad. We use the free account for our production system which is plenty fine, and is just a life saver. I find it highly superior to the ExceptionNotifier and ExceptionLogger plugins. It's dead simple to install, and then you get automatic email notification, as well as really nice presentation of the exceptions in their web UI.

But, also, one nice thing is that it doesn't email you every time you get the exception, just the first time, but then it queues up the others, so when you go look at it on the web, you'll see that say it happened 7 times or whatever. This alone is really great in that if for some reason you introduce something that is all of a sudden firing off lots of exceptions, and you have a high traffic site, you won't have now completely inundated your email inbox with the notices.

Another other cool thing is that it integrates with Capistrano deployments, and records when your deployments were done, so this gives you a bit more info, and may be the key to tracking down what is wrong (e.g. you deploy, and then shortly thereafter you start getting notices, you know that the problem is in whatever you just introduced).

Finally, there's even an API to interact with it. Lots of goodness, and it's the only thing I use now - even with a New Relic RPM account, I still use Hoptoad for all my exception notification.

Answer 4

Hoptoad is my preferred exception notifier by a landslide. It's intelligent about the emails it sends me, and it's web interface does a nice job of automatically organizing all of the exceptions.

If I make a change that causes an error, I'll likely get several of the same error messages, so Hoptoad sends me an email, and in the web interface I might see something like 4 of the same error, I can click through to the details, patch the bug, and with one click check them off as fixed.

It's a really nice clean way of handling exceptions and strikes me as far less intrusive/ghetto.

Answer 5

I also use Hoptoad and it seems to functions ok after a slightly fiddly setup (but then I need to log rake exceptions too).

However, if I hadn't won a Hoptoad account, I'd prefer to use Exceptional as it has much better notification options (such as SMS)