How CircleCI uses Rollbar to level up their continuous delivery
I'm excited to share a fun and insightful interview our friends at The Changelog recently did with Paul Biggar, Founder at CircleCI (and Rollbar super-user). We're big supporters and fans of The Changelog and we asked their host and master interviewer Adam, to help us produce a few short interviews with our customers. It's a fun project that lets us pull back the curtain and learn more about how our customers monitor their applications and processes for handling errors and deploying code. Enjoy!
Featured in this interview: Adam Stacoviak, Founder & Chief Editor at The Changelog, a podcast on software development and open source. Subscribe via iTunes or RSS. Paul Biggar, Founder of CircleCI, a leading continuous integration platform.
Improved ruby error reporting with our latest gem updates
Recently, we released version 2.13.0 of the rollbar-gem. This update is full of new features and some minor bug fixes. The full release notes can be found here, Release 2.13.0. Here are a few of the highlights in this update:
1. Allow overriding configuration
Many customers have asked to implement a way to override the default configuration for a specific block of code. Some of them use the same process to send reports to our API for different projects, some need to change the environment, and others want to use one async handler for a single block of code (or none at all).
So, we've added a new method called Rollbar.with_config to do this. It receives a Hash object with the configuration overrides you want to use for the given block. The configuration options can be found at Configuration. The Hash passed to with_config should be formatted like {environment: 'specific-environment'}. For example:
5 ways to reduce noise when logging your JavaScript exceptions
Developing and maintaining user facing software is a challenge and a very distracting one at that. :-) Often times it can be difficult trying to stay focused on what matters most. It can be hard to tell what's really broken and why, with dozens of alerts notifying you every other minute. Volatile… The client-side being one of the most volatile of them all.
When we attempt to capture errors in this environment we can very quickly get overwhelmed by lots and lots of noise. This noise is typically generated from many different places. Some examples would be old outdated browsers, browser extensions, third-party scripts, bots, spiders, etc. Rollbar's JavaScript error monitoring supports many different ways of reducing this noise so you can be more proactive in what and how you're collecting your JavaScript exceptions.
Client-side error handling in Angular
AngularJS is a popular open-source JavaScript MVC framework that lets you build highly structured, testable, and maintainable front-end applications. Angular is most commonly used on single-page applications. Stable and reliable single page applications depend on solid client-side error logging tools and techniques. But, getting the right exception data and context isn't always easy. We're going to dive into how to capture, handle and debug Angular errors.
SAML-based Single Sign-On (SSO) now available
If your team uses Google Apps for Work or Okta, you can now access your Rollbar account using SAML-based single sign-on (SSO). SSO via Google Apps and Okta is available on all paid plans, and can be setup in minutes by an admin.
Once SSO is enabled, users can access your Rollbar account with just a click from the Google App Drawer or Okta My Applications screen.
Two-Factor Authentication now available for all users
We’re excited to introduce Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) in Rollbar as an optional extra layer of security on every user’s account. 2FA reduces your risk of having your account hacked through phishing, credential exploitation or other remote attacks.
We highly recommend enabling Two-Factor Authentication for your entire team. It’s easy to setup (and free)!
Exception monitoring for production environments
Tools like Rollbar have changed the way development teams are recording and managing their exceptions. What used to be a very personal developer-by-developer activity can now be a team-wide tool for greater transparency, and increased application quality.
But many still treat exception monitoring as a developer activity, and they are not leveraging its benefits across all environments, from development to stage and integration, to systems testing and production. In this post and another on QA environments, I will review why exception monitoring in all environments is so beneficial, and some best practices for setting it up.
We are trying to standardize with Rollbar for exception monitoring across environments and clients. It helps our clients have visibility and thus better input into the application and development processes, and it’s a good way for us to ensure quality prior to delivering releases to customers.
But even after release, the tool has been extremely useful for the following reasons:
Using Rollbar to unravel existing Laravel applications
About 6 months ago I inherited a project (let’s call it Project Mayhem) that was grossly neglected by the original developer. I won’t go into too many details, but let’s just say that I’ve seen spaghetti with more order than this codebase had. No unit tests, no documentation, illogical architecture, and an expecting client… I felt like I was literally living in one of those nightmares where I’m late for the final exam in a class I passed a decade ago.
The icing on this terrible cake was that I also inherited the hosting and was graciously provided with absolutely no specs in order to replicate the previous production environment. I was flying blind, and if it weren’t for Rollbar's php error logging tools, this project would have crashed and burned long before I could make any meaningful changes to it. I was able to manage and prioritize exceptions as they happened, which gave me the information I needed to build out a proper hosting architecture and quickly fix existing issues in the codebase.
Suffice it to say, I am a big fan of Rollbar.