Log server-side and client-side errors automatically

• Download Spacebin - 8.51 KB 

Introduction 

This article focuses on how to log all errors your end-users get (and you never know about!) automatically and making it available in a single hosted service account:

Background  

We are ASP.NET developers working on many sites, growing sick and tired of the whole error reporting, bugtracking and fixing loop that we are sucked into daily. And it never gets better. You never know if what you fixed is really fixed for all clients. Your QA guys go over the same issue again and again and verify it, but miss to test in on that specific Mac OSX Safari browser that 10% of your end-users are using. 

So what is the solution? Is there a way to automate this whole mess in just 10 minutes? 

The Solution

The idea is really simple. ASP.NET is a great framework and allows developers to hook custom modules into their web sites and project. One such module can intercept all errors your application encounters in a generic way. So why not just install this module and have it automatically log all errors somewhere? 

Sure, this idea is not new and there are some tools that help here, but say you have 5 sites you want to monitor? Or you want to be notified only about certain errors and not for other via email or RSS? Or how about that - you want to log client side javascript errors as well?  All of this conveniently stored in a single place, in a hosted service?

How it works 

Very simple really. We created a new site for this service  http://www.spacebin.net where we decided we will keep track of all errors our own sites get. We also created a free account plan so that anyone else can test and use it and give us feedback (so please do).

The we created the SpaceBin.ErrorLogging module, which you can find attached to this article. Installation is very simple

• Sign-up for a free account on our site www.spacebin.net, login and create a new website to be monitored by your account. Creating a new website to be monitored generates an unique key for the site.
• Download the Spacebin.ErrorLog ASP.NET module binary (Spacebin.ErrorLog.dll) from attached file or from the following link
  
• Copy the Spacebin.ErrorLog.dll file to the /bin folder of your application.
  
• Modify the web.config file of your website in the following way
  
  • Add a new section describing the new Spacebin.ErrorLog configuration tag (copy this literally)

    <configuration>
        <configSections>
            ...
            <section name="Spacebin.ErrorLog"
                        requirePermission="false"
                        type="System.Configuration.SingleTagSectionHandler,System,
                                Version=1.0.3300.0,
                                Culture=neutral,
                                PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"/>
            ...
        </configSections>
    </configuration>
    

  • Add the <spacebin.errorlog> configuration and the key you have been given for the website you monitor and the Url to the service site. Example:

    <configuration>
        ...
        <Spacebin.ErrorLog key="9b68abbf3b3a04b4fcd6f91a4a2919e47bfb937e"
        crashServiceUrl="www.spacebin.net"
        enableErrorSending="true"/>
        ...
    </configuration>
    

    The properties in the configuration mean:
    
    key - the unique identification key for the website you wish to monitor.
    carshServiceUrl - the URL of the crash service webiste provided by Spacebin.
    enableErrorSending - can be used to temporarily stop loggin errors to your Spacebin account (you can switch it off when you upgrade/maintain your site and then back on in production mode). Default value is true.  
  • Modify the HttpModules section to map error messages to the Spacebin logger. Example:

    <configuration>
        ...
        <system.web>
            <httpModules>
                ...
                    <add name="ErrorLog" type="Spacebin.ErrorLog.LogModule, Spacebin.ErrorLog"/>
                ...
            </httpModules>
        </system.web>
    

• Testing and verifying crash service works correctly.
  Just create a page that throws any kind of exception, anywhere. For example:

  protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
  {
      throw new Exception("Test Exception That Should be Logged");
  }
  

  Verify that this exception is logged in your account on our site. If this is not the case, please go through the checklist again and see if you have missed something. 

The End Result 

All server-side and client-side errors your end-users get and you never knew about in one convenient interface

The End Result