bugsnag

Bugsnag Notifier for Node.js

The Bugsnag Notifier for Node.js automatically notifies you of synchronous and asynchronous errors in your Node.js applications.

Bugsnag captures errors in real-time from your web, mobile and desktop applications, helping you to understand and resolve them as fast as possible. Create a free account to start capturing errors from your applications.

Installation & Setup

Install bugsnag using npm:

npm install bugsnag --save

Require bugsnag in your node.js app:

var bugsnag = require("bugsnag");

Register the bugsnag notifier with your API key:

bugsnag.register("your-api-key-here");

See below for additional configuration options.

Using Express or Connect Middleware

If your app uses Express or Connect, Bugsnag can automatically capture errors that happen during requests, including errors that happen in asynchronous code.

To ensure that asynchronous errors are routed to the error handler, add the requestHandler middleware to your app as the first middleware:

app.use(bugsnag.requestHandler);

You'll also need to add Bugsnag's error handling middleware, make sure to add this after all other middleware, but before any "error" middleware:

app.use(bugsnag.errorHandler);

Using Restify

If your app uses Restify, Bugsnag can automatically capture errors that happen during requests.

To get notified of the errors in your app, just add the Bugsnag restify handler to your code.

server.on("uncaughtException", bugsnag.restifyHandler);

If you don't use any other uncaughtException event listeners, you will need to add the default handler back in, like this.

server.on("uncaughtException", function (req, res, route, e) {
  if (!res._headerSent) res.send(new restify.InternalError(e, e.message || 'unexpected error'));
});

Using Coffeescript

When executing coffeecript code directly using the coffee executable, Bugsnag cannot notify about uncaught exceptions that occur at the top level of your app. This is due to a "feature" of the coffee executable.

To avoid this issue, make sure to compile your coffeescript files into javascript before running your app.

Send Non-Fatal Exceptions to Bugsnag

To send non-fatal exceptions to Bugsnag, you can pass any Error object or string to the notify method:

bugsnag.notify(new Error("Non-fatal"));

You can also send additional meta data with your exception:

bugsnag.notify(new Error("Non-fatal"), {
  user: {
    username: "bob-hoskins",
    name: "Bob Hoskins",
    email: "[e-mail]"
  }
});

See the full documentation for the notify function for more details.

Capturing Asynchronous Errors

Bugsnag can automatically capture both synchronous and asynchronous errors in your code if you wrap it in an autoNotify function. Note: If you are using the bugsnag.requestHandler middleware for Express or Connect, we automatically wrap your requests with autoNotify.

bugsnag.autoNotify(function() {
  // Your code here
});

Additionally, you can pass options into autoNotify that will be used as default options for the notify call to any errors. See the notify docs for more details.

bugsnag.autoNotify({ context: "thisContext" }, function() {
  // Your code here
});

The autoNotify function creates a Node.js Domain which automatically routes all uncaught errors to Bugsnag.

Capturing Errors in Callback Functions

Many callback functions in Node are called with an error as the first arguement. Bugsnag can intercept these errors if you wrap your callback with bugsnag.intercept:

functionWithCallback(bugsnag.intercept(function(argument) {
  // Your code here
}));

If the first argument is non-null, Bugsnag will be automatically notified of the error, and your callback will not be executed. The first argument is never passed to your callback, since it is assumed to be the error argument.

Configuration

The bugsnag.register can accept an options object as its second parameter. The options can be a combination of any of the following:

releaseStage

By default, Bugsnag looks at the NODE_ENV environment variable to see what releaseStage the script is running in. If that is not set, Bugsnag assumes you are running in production. If you want to override this behavior, you can set the releaseStage option:

bugsnag.register("your-api-key-here", { releaseStage: "development" });

notifyReleaseStages

By default the notifier will notify Bugsnag of production and development exceptions. If you wish to be notified about production exceptions only, you can set the notifyReleaseStages option.

bugsnag.register("your-api-key-here", { notifyReleaseStages: ["production"] });

appVersion

The Bugsnag notifier will automatically use the version from your package.json file. If you want to override this behavior, you can set the appVersion option:

bugsnag.register("your-api-key-here", { appVersion: "1.0.0" });

autoNotifyUncaught

Bugsnag will automatically register for the uncaughtexception event. If you do not wish for this to happen, you can disable the functionality as part of the register call:

bugsnag.register("your-api-key-here", { autoNotifyUncaught: false });

projectRoot

Bugsnag can highlight stacktrace lines that are in your project, and automatically hides stacktrace lines from external libraries. If Bugsnag is not hiding external stacktrace lines, it is likely that the projectRoot is being incorrectly calculated. You can set projectRoot as part of the register call:

bugsnag.register("your-api-key-here", { projectRoot: "/path/to/root" });

packageJSON

If the Bugsnag notifier is unable to locate your package.json, you can specify where to find it using packageJSON:

bugsnag.register("your-api-key-here", { packageJSON: "/path/to/package.json" });

useSSL

By default, errors will be sent to Bugsnag using SSL. To disable SSL, you can set useSSL:

bugsnag.register("your-api-key-here", { useSSL: false });

onUncaughtError

By default, bugsnag will exit your application if there is an uncaught exception or an uncaught event emitter "error" event. This is in line with standard node.js behaviour. If you want to have different behaviour, then please set onUncaughtError as follows,

bugsnag.register("your-api-key-here", { onUncaughtError: function(error){
  console.error(err.stack || err);
}});

This function is called for all errors that aren't manually sent to bugsnag.notify. So a bugsnag.intercept call will trigger a call to onUncaughtError.

metaData

It is often very useful to send some extra application or user specific data along with every exception. To do this, you can set the metaData:

bugsnag.register("your-api-key-here", { metaData: {
  user: {
    username: "bob-hoskins",
    name: "Bob Hoskins",
    email: "[e-mail]"
  }
}});

You can adjust this after calling register by using the bugsnag.metaData property.

Notify

The bugsnag.notify function accepts an error as either a string or an Error object as the first argument, as well as options object as its second parameter. The options can be a combination of any of the following:

errorName

Errors in your Bugsnag dashboard are grouped by their "error class", to override the error class you can set errorName:

bugsnag.notify(new Error("Something went badly wrong"), { errorName: "BadError" });

context

A string representing what was happening in your application at the time of the error. In Express/Connect apps, this will automatically be set to the URL of the current request.

bugsnag.notify(new Error("Something went badly wrong"), { context: "/users/new" });

userId

A unique identifier for a user affected by this error. This could be any distinct identifier that makes sense for your application. In Express/Connect apps, this is automatically set to the ip address of the current request.

bugsnag.notify(new Error("Something went badly wrong"), { userId: "bob-hoskins" });

groupingHash

If you need programmatical control over how the errors are grouped within bugsnag, you can send a groupingHash to the notify call. This will ensure that bugsnag groups all errors with the same groupingHash together.

bugsnag.notify(error, { groupingHash: "auth/create" });

metaData

Any extra data you want along with the exception report to Bugsnag. To do this just set other properties on the object, and you will see them as tabs in the error dashboard.

bugsnag.notify(new Error("Something went badly wrong"), {
  user: {
    username: "bob-hoskins",
    name: "Bob Hoskins",
    email: "[e-mail]"
  }
});

callback

A callback to call after notifying Bugsnag of an error. The callback has two arguments, err and response. The err argument will contain any error received when trying to send the notification, the response object will contain the response received from Bugsnag:

bugsnag.notify(new Error("Something went badly wrong"), function (error, response) {
  if(err) {
    // Something went wrong
  } else {
    // The notify worked
  }
})

Reporting Bugs or Feature Requests

Please report any bugs or feature requests on the github issues page for this project here:

https://github.com/bugsnag/bugsnag-node/issues

Contributing

• Fork the notifier on github
• Commit and push until you are happy with your contribution. Please only edit the coffeescript files.
• Make a pull request
• Thanks!

Releasing

Ensure all the coffee-script is compiled, and the tests pass:

grunt

Bump the version number

grunt bump

Push tag to github

grunt release

Push code to npm

npm publish

License

The Bugsnag Node.js notifier is free software released under the MIT License. See LICENSE.txt for details.