June 2014 Summaries

Rollbar has introduced a new feature that allows users to view the history of events by IP address, similar to the existing functionality for tracking history by person. This enhancement is particularly useful for diagnosing issues that affect logged-out users. Users can access this feature by clicking on an IP address within the Rollbar interface, which will display all events associated with that IP. Additionally, there is a convenient link provided to access the WHOIS record for the IP address.

A new version of rollbar.js has been released, featuring updates that improve compatibility with Browserify and Webpack. The updated version is available both on the company's CDN and GitHub, along with examples demonstrating its integration with these tools. This release provides an alternative for users who prefer to incorporate rollbar.js through Browserify or Webpack instead of using the standard snippet, with contributions from @altano acknowledged for assistance in the update.

Rollbar is a tool designed to help track software deployments and fix exceptions, providing users with insights into what breaks and why, thereby improving future releases. It offers an easy and quick installation process, allowing users to get started in minutes with plans starting at no cost. Users can benefit from 5,000 free events per month indefinitely and have the option of a 14-day full-feature trial to explore its capabilities. Rollbar integrates with platforms like Codeship to enhance deployment tracking and deliver clarity and confidence in software development and releases.

Rollbar has released version 1.0.0-rc9 of rollbar.js, addressing a bug that caused the error "TypeError: Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property '_wrapped' of null" in certain environments. Users experiencing this issue are advised to update to the latest version by obtaining the updated snippet from the documentation.

Rollbar's updated Custom Grouping feature enhances error management by enabling users to group errors based on specific conditions using simple JSON rules. This allows for grouping TimeoutErrors by their controller and action, 404 errors by path, and Android exceptions by app version, among other possibilities. The feature now supports dynamic templates for titles and fingerprints, referencing any part of an incoming occurrence or the default algorithm's generated title and fingerprint. This customization aims to address specific application needs by allowing users to define grouping rules when Rollbar's default algorithm does not suffice. The enhanced feature is live for all accounts, and Rollbar invites users to contact their support for assistance or to explore the service through a free sign-up.

Rollbar is a tool designed to enhance software development by providing features that help track and understand software issues, allowing users to build with confidence and release with clarity. It offers a free plan that includes 5,000 events per month, forever, along with a 14-day full feature trial to help users get started quickly. Additionally, Rollbar ensures security by regularly updating load balancers with the latest security patches, providing users with more information through their platform.

Rollbar has introduced a feature that simplifies debugging by allowing developers to instantly view the values of local variables in stack frames when an exception occurs. This feature, implemented in Python through pyrollbar, utilizes the inspect module to collect stack frames and variable values, addressing common debugging challenges such as determining which variable is causing an issue. To handle sensitive data, Rollbar employs a scrub_fields configuration to redact information like access tokens, and uses the repr module to handle large or complex variables. This feature has been successfully tested in production for two weeks, with plans to expand support to additional languages like Ruby and PHP. Users can enable this feature by updating to pyrollbar 0.8.0 or greater, and those interested in other languages are encouraged to contact Rollbar for further development.

A new feature has been introduced that includes deploy email notifications displaying which commits were involved in a specific deployment by querying GitHub's API. This feature highlights the differences between the commit used for the previous deployment and the newly deployed commit, offering users greater transparency and tracking of changes. As long as one user in an account has GitHub enabled with the appropriate token, all users in that account can access the commit list. To utilize this feature, users simply need to sign up for a free account, connect it with GitHub, and set up deploy tracking to receive informative deployment emails.

A bug in daily summary emails was identified, which led to missing error information due to a timezone handling miscalculation, affecting almost all customers. The issue, reported by a customer on May 1st, was eventually traced back to the use of time.mktime() that incorrectly assumed local timezone for a UTC datetime object. This resulted in inaccurate occurrence counts and missing errors in emails. The debugging process involved recreating database queries in a development environment and analyzing potential causes like MySQL slave delay and transactions, which were ruled out. Rollbar debugging revealed that the incorrect min_ts and max_ts values were due to the improper handling of the timezone. The problem was resolved by replacing time.mktime() with calendar.timegm(), which correctly handles UTC, offering a straightforward solution to prevent future timezone-related bugs.