Exception Logger for Rails3

You liked the exception logger from github.com/defunkt/exception_logger for Rails2?

You want to have the same functionallity using Rails3?

You want to upgrade your Rails2 application and the old plugin breaks?

You …

Then just use the exception_logger gem instead and tell your friends to do the same ;)

Hosted on RubyGems.org

This gem is hosted on RubyGems.org: rubygems.org/gems/exception_logger

Install

Inside your Gemfile:

gem "exception_logger", :require => "exception_logger"

and then run:

bundle install

Gem Dependencies

Please check if all those requirements are satisfied on your environment.

i18n >= 0.4.1
meta_where >= 0.5.2 # (used to avoid SQL inside the CODE)
will_paginate >= 3.0.pre2 # (used for pagination)
rails >= 3.0.0

Inside your ApplicationController:

include ExceptionLogger::ExceptionLoggable # loades the module
rescue_from Exception, :with => :log_exception_handler # tells rails to forward the 'Exception' (you can change the type) to the handler of the module

Generators

Database Setup

Use

rails g exception_logger:migration

This will create a database migration

TIMESTAMP_add_exception_table.rb

inside db/migrations

Stylesheet and Javascript

You can copy the stylesheet and javascript to your applications public directory by using

rails g exception_logger:stylescripts

This allows you to customize those files.

This will be also necessary if you use a webserver ( e.g. passenger+nginx ) in front of rails which does the static file handling for you.

Routing

The gem is preconfigured to extend your routes automatically. You can access the logged exceptions by pointing to “/logged_exceptions” inside your application.

You can use the rake tasks

rake routes

to see and check the routes.

Exception Notification

by Email

Rails directly provides a plugin called “Exception Notification” ( github.com/rails/exception_notification ).

Just download the plugin and follow the usage instructions from the README file ( github.com/rails/exception_notification/blob/master/README ) and add this code to one of your initializer files

# Example: put this to config/initializers/exception_notification.rb
Whatever::Application.config.middleware.use ExceptionNotifier,
  :email_prefix => "[Whatever] ",
  :sender_address => %{"notifier" <[email protected]>},
  :exception_recipients => %w{[email protected]}

Restart your server and you are done. (Don’t forget to setup your email settings inside your environment files.)

Authentication

If you want, and believe me you want that, you can add the following lines to your environment to enable Authentication

Example uses the declarative_authorization gem

in config/environment/production.rb:

config.after_initialize do
  LoggedExceptionsController.class_eval do
    # include any custom auth modules you need
    # (declarative authorization gem used)
    filter_resource_access
    # just add any code you want to be included in the controller ;)
    # optional, sets the application name for the rss feeds
    self.application_name = "Your Application Name"
  end
end

and (if you use declarative_authorization) add this to your authorization_rules.rb file:

role :admin do
  has_permission_on :logged_exceptions, :to => :manage
  ...

Upgrading from the old plugin

If you have used the exception_logger plugin for your rails2 application and want to migrate to rails 3 then:

Remove the old plugin (just delete the vendor/plugins/exception_logger folder)
Install the new gem version (see Install)
DONE. (if I forgot something, then let me know.)

Legacy

For more and older details read the README.old File.

Testing & Development

Testing should always start before the actual development.

You can test this gem very easily. Just run:

rake test:basic

from the console of the cloned github repository of the exception logger.

This rake task will create a rails app inside the test directory called rails_root and will install the exception logger and migrate the database of that application just in time.

The generator which generates the rails app in your test directory will skip over every existing file, hence if you want to customize a file, then just add/create it.

Note on Patches/Pull Requests

Fork the project.
Make your feature addition or bug fix.
Add tests for it. This is important so I don’t break it in a future version unintentionally.
Commit, do not mess with rakefile, version, or history. (if you want to have your own version, that is fine but bump version in a commit by itself I can ignore when I pull)
Send me a pull request. Bonus points for topic branches.