Honeybadger for Elixir

Elixir Plug, Logger and client for the :zap: Honeybadger error notifier.

Getting Started

Watch our screencast by Josh Adams of ElixirSips!

1. Install the package

Prerequisites: minimum of Elixir 1.0 and Erlang 18.0

Add the Honeybadger package to deps/0 and application/0 in your application’s mix.exs file and run mix do deps.get, deps.compile

defp application do
 [applications: [:honeybadger, :logger]]
end

defp deps do
  [{:honeybadger, "~> 0.6"}]
end

2. Set your API key and environment name

By default the environment variable HONEYBADGER_API_KEY will be used to find your API key to the Honeybadger API. If you would like to specify your key or any other configuration options a different way, you can do so in config.exs:

config :honeybadger,
  api_key: "sup3rs3cr3tk3y"

We also need to set the name of the environment for each environment. This ensures that we can accurately report the environment that an error occurs in. You can add something like the following to each of your #{env}.exs files:

config :honeybadger,
  environment_name: :dev

If environment_name is not set we will fall back to the MIX_ENV environment variable. If neither MIX_ENV or the environment_name config are set then you will get an exception informing you to set one of them. It is preferred that you set environment_name in your config.exs files for each environment. This ensures that we can give you accurate environment information even during compile time. Explicitly setting the environment_name config takes higher precedence over the MIX_ENV environment variable.

3. Enable error reporting

The Honeybadger package can be used as a Plug alongside your Phoenix applications, as a logger backend, or as a standalone client for sprinkling in exception notifications where they are needed.

Phoenix and Plug

The Honeybadger Plug adds a Plug.ErrorHandler to your pipeline. Simply use the Honeybadger.Plug module inside of a Plug or Phoenix.Router and any crashes will be automatically reported to Honeybadger. It’s best to use Honeybadger.Plug after the Router plugs so that exceptions due to non-matching routes are not reported to Honeybadger.

defmodule MyPlugApp do
  use Plug.Router
  use Honeybadger.Plug

  [... the rest of your plug ...]
end

defmodule MyPhoenixApp.Router do
  use Crywolf.Web, :router
  use Honeybadger.Plug

  pipeline :browser do
    [...]
  end
end

Logger

Just set the use_logger option to true in your application’s config.exs and you’re good to go! Any SASL compliant processes that crash will send an error report to the Honeybadger.Logger. After the error reaches the logger we take care of notifying Honeybadger for you!

Manual reporting

You can manually report rescued exceptions with the Honeybadger.notify macro.

try do
  File.read! "this_file_really_should_exist_dang_it.txt"
rescue
  exception ->
    require Honeybadger
    Honeybadger.notify(exception)
end

Sample Application

If you’d like to see the module in action before you integrate it with your apps, check out our sample Phoenix application.

You can deploy the sample app to your Heroku account by clicking this button:

Don’t forget to destroy the Heroku app after you’re done so that you aren’t charged for usage.

The code for the sample app is available on Github, in case you’d like to read through it, or run it locally.

Advanced Configuration

You can set configuration options in config.exs. It looks like this:

config :honeybadger,
  api_key: "sup3rs3cr3tk3y",
  environment_name: :prod

Here are all of the options you can pass in the keyword list:

Name	Description	Default
api_key	Your application’s Honeybadger API key	System.get_env(“HONEYBADGER_API_KEY”))`
environment_name	(required) The name of the environment your app is running in.	nil
app	Name of your app’s OTP Application as an atom	Mix.Project.config[:app]
use_logger	Enable the Honeybadger Logger for handling errors outside of web requests	true
exclude_envs	Environments that you want to disable Honeybadger notifications	[:dev, :test]
hostname	Hostname of the system your application is running on	:inet.gethostname
origin	URL for the Honeybadger API	“https://api.honeybadger.io”
project_root	Directory root for where your application is running	System.cwd

Public Interface

Honeybadger.notify: Send an exception to Honeybadger.

Use the Honeybadger.notify/2 macro to send exception information to the collector API. The first parameter is the exception and the second parameter is the context/metadata. There is also a Honeybadger.notify/1 which doesn’t require the second parameter.

Examples:

try do
  File.read! "this_file_really_should_exist_dang_it.txt"
rescue
  exception ->
    require Honeybadger
    context = %{user_id: 5, account_name: "Foo"}
    Honeybadger.notify(exception, context)
end

---

Honeybadger.context/1: Set metadata to be sent if an error occurs

Honeybadger.context/1 is provided for adding extra data to the notification that gets sent to Honeybadger. You can make use of this in places such as a Plug in your Phoenix Router or Controller to ensure useful debugging data is sent along.

Examples:

def MyPhoenixApp.Controller
  use MyPhoenixApp.Web, :controller

  plug :set_honeybadger_context

  def set_honeybadger_context(conn, _opts) do
    user = get_user(conn)
    Honeybadger.context(user_id: user.id, account: user.account.name)
    conn
  end
end

---

Changelog

See https://github.com/honeybadger-io/honeybadger-elixir/releases

Contributing

If you’re adding a new feature, please submit an issue as a preliminary step; that way you can be (moderately) sure that your pull request will be accepted.

To contribute your code:

1. Fork it.
2. Create a topic branch git checkout -b my_branch
3. Commit your changes git commit -am "Boom"
4. Push to your branch git push origin my_branch
5. Send a pull request

License

This library is MIT licensed. See the LICENSE file in this repository for details.