Sentry 

What does the Sentry connection provide? 

  • The Sentry SDK is initialized for you so that it can be used inside any of your actions.
  • Any uncaught exceptions are automatically captured and sent to Sentry using the initialized SDK.

Setting up the Sentry connection 

Create a project in Sentry 

First, create a project in Sentry and select Node.JS as the platform. If you already have a Node.JS project, you can skip this step.

A view of Sentry's project setup page with Node.JS selected

Copy your project's DSN 

Next, you will need to copy the Data Source Name (DSN) from your Sentry project's settings page. This is the URL that the SDK will use to send events to Sentry.

To view your DSN, click on the project's name to view the project details page, then click on the gear icon on the top right to view the project's settings page, and then click on Client Keys in the left sidebar.

Once you're on the Client Keys page, copy the DSN to your clipboard using the copy icon.

A view of Sentry's Client Keys page with an arrow pointing to the copy icon beside the Data Source Name (DSN)

Add the Sentry connection to your app 

Now that your DSN is copied, head over to your Gadget application, click Plugins on the sidebar to view the list of connections and click on the Sentry connection to configure it.

A view of Gadget's connections page with an arrow pointing to the Sentry connection

Paste your DSN into the Data Source Name (DSN) field and click Confirm.

A view of Gadget's Sentry connection page with the Data Source Name (DSN) field populated

That's it! You're all set up. Now you can test out the connection by moving on to the next section.

How does the Sentry connection work? 

The Sentry SDK is initialized for you so that it can be used inside any of your Actions, and any uncaught exceptions are automatically captured and sent to Sentry using the initialized SDK.

Uncaught exceptions 

An uncaught exception is an exception that is not caught by a try/catch block. If an uncaught exception occurs, Gadget will automatically capture the exception for you and send it to Sentry.

Let's see what an uncaught exception looks like.

Create a new Global Action with the API Identifier testSentry and add a Run Code Snippet Effect to the list of Run Effects.

A view of Gadget's Global Actions page with a Global Action selected that contains the API Identifier testSentry and a Run Code Snippet effect pointing to a file named globalActions/testSentry.js

Throw an error inside your Run Code Snippet Effect without surrounding it with a try/catch block.

api/actions/testSentry.js
JavaScript
export const run: ActionRun = async ({}) => {
throw new Error("Uh oh!");
};
export const run: ActionRun = async ({}) => {
throw new Error("Uh oh!");
};

Now test out your testSentry Global Action by calling its GraphQL API in the GraphQL Playground. You can access the API Playground by clicking on the API Playground link in the sidebar.

Try running the following mutation in the Playground:

GraphQL
1mutation {
2 testSentry {
3 success
4 errors {
5 message
6 code
7 stack
8 }
9 result
10 }
11}

You should see an uncaught exception!

A view of a Gadget application's GraphQL Playground sending a testSentry mutation and receiving an error in the response

This means your Global Action is working as expected. Now head over to your Sentry project's issues page and see if the error was captured.

A view of Sentry's Issues page containing an error with the message 'Uh oh!'

Looks like your error was captured and sent to Sentry! 🎉

Clicking on the error displays additional information about it like the stack trace, tags, breadcrumbs, and more.

A view of Sentry's detailed error page

Manually capturing exceptions 

The Sentry SDK is initialized for you to be used inside any of your Actions. When you initially configured the Sentry connection, we added the @sentry/node package to your package.json. This means that you can import the Sentry SDK into any of your Actions and use it to manually send events to Sentry.

Manually capturing exceptions is useful when you want to attach additional information to the exception before sending it to Sentry. For example, you may want to add a tag to the exception to indicate something unique about a particular error.

You can modify your testSentry Global Action to manually capture the exception instead of relying on Gadget to capture it automatically and add an additional tag.

JavaScript
1//in api/actions/testSentry.ts
2import * as Sentry from "@sentry/node";
3
4export const run: ActionRun = async ({}) => {
5 // Action code for global action testSentry
6 try {
7 // pretend this has some complicated logic that can fail in many places :)
8 throw new Error("Uh oh!");
9 } catch (error) {
10 Sentry.captureException(error, {
11 tags: {
12 // feel free to add any additional information that might be relevant to this error as tags
13 foo: "bar",
14 },
15 });
16 }
17};
1//in api/actions/testSentry.ts
2import * as Sentry from "@sentry/node";
3
4export const run: ActionRun = async ({}) => {
5 // Action code for global action testSentry
6 try {
7 // pretend this has some complicated logic that can fail in many places :)
8 throw new Error("Uh oh!");
9 } catch (error) {
10 Sentry.captureException(error, {
11 tags: {
12 // feel free to add any additional information that might be relevant to this error as tags
13 foo: "bar",
14 },
15 });
16 }
17};

With that in place, trigger your testSentry Global Action again by heading over to the GraphQL Playground and running the same mutation mentioned above in the Uncaught Exceptions section.

Your manually captured exception should appear in Sentry just like your automatically captured one did; however this time, we can see your additional foo: "bar" tag.

A view of Sentry's detailed error page containing your foo: bar tag

There you have it! You now know how to set up the Sentry connection and how to use it to manually capture exceptions with additional information.

Be sure to check out the Sentry documentation for more information on how to use the Sentry SDK.

Troubleshooting 

If you don't see any errors in Sentry, here are a few things to check:

  1. Make sure a warning wasn't logged mentioning that Sentry could not be initialized while running an action. If a warning was logged, it means that the Sentry SDK was not initialized correctly. Check the warning message for more information on how to fix it.
  2. Make sure you have configured the Sentry connection correctly. You can check this by verifying that the Data Source Name (DSN) field is populated with the same DSN in your Sentry project's Client Keys page.
  3. Make sure you have the Sentry SDK installed. If you don't see the @sentry/node package listed in your package.json, make sure to add it and click the Run yarn button on the top right.

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