RichText

Since we released Swirrl to the public (my company’s rails-based, semantic data-wiki), we’ve been using Hoptoad, the “app error app” from Thoughtbot.

As was to be expected, Swirrl had a few minor teething problems in its first few days (as people started using the app in unanticipated ways), and I don’t think we could have handled everything so smoothly without our little green friend.

Hoptoad is a breeze to set up: To get started, you just install the plugin, change a bit of config in your app, and you’re ready to hop with the toad. The readme file that comes with the plugin gives you details of how you can customize things to your liking (such as which exceptions to ignore etc).

Once you’ve got it set up correctly, the need to scour your log files for errors is completely removed. It also has major benefits over rails’ standard error notification mechanism. Hoptoad lets you “reclaim your inbox”, as instead of mailing you all the error notifications, it presents them to you in a clean and uncluttered interface (no unnecessary bells and whistles – just the way I like it!).

As you’d expect, it provides all the important information about each individual error, such as exactly when it happened, the call stack, session-data, and information about the user’s browser etc. And once you’ve dealt with an error you can mark errors as ‘resolved’ – you can filter these from your list to help maintain a state of zen-like order. If you do want to be notified as soon as an error occurs, you can opt to be sent an email, or subscribe to your personal hoptoad RSS feed.

So, by using Hoptoad, when the unexpected inevitably ocurrs (nobody’s perfect), you can quickly identify the problem, resolve it and send your users on their merry way once more!