As our user base continues to expand, the first priority is to continue providing the best service possible. Azure allows us to guarantee scalability, and has already proven to be much faster and more responsive. We're ready for whatever you can throw at us.
Developing infrastructure takes time, and we would rather be developing the code behind Exceptionless. The move to Azure allows us to do just that, taking a lot off our plate in terms of hosting. It's pretty awesome.
In the future, we would like to become an Azure partner and be listed as one of the approved store add-ons. We're not there yet, because we've got to go through the application process, etc, etc, but it's in the works!
"Azure is an open and flexible cloud platform that enables you to quickly build, deploy and manage applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. You can build applications using any language, tool or framework. And you can integrate your public cloud applications with your existing IT environment." - Microsoft Azure
We are happy with the move and think it means great things for the future of Exceptionless. We hope our users appreciate the speed and responsiveness, and can see the improvements in service.
When an error occurs in your app, you need to know the critical details, fast, so you can drill down and fix it. We get it - we're developers too - that's why we built Exceptionless.
The trick was organizing the data so it didn't overwhelm our users, while still providing all the important stuff so developers wouldn't have to spend extra time tracking down versions, requesting stack traces, or pulling teeth to get environment information.
Lets take a look at the default information included with every error. We say default because you can easily add your own information with custom objects.
The overview tab holds general information for that occurrence, including the variables below. Sometimes this is all you'll need to track down the bug. Sometimes you'll need to dig deeper.
On the exception tab, we reference the timestamp, error type, message, and stack trace, while also providing you with all of the loaded modules, including versions.
Request Tab
Here we have tons of important request info:
Occurred On
HTTP Method
URL
Referrer
Client IP
User Agent
Browser
Browser OS
Device
Is Known Bot
Cookie Values
Environment Tab
Environment isn't something that we always think about, but in some cases it can tell us a lot about the exception. We've got you covered!
We have done our best to include all the important information in an organized, easy to read, intuitive interface. Think we're missing something? Think we can organize it differently? Let us know! We love feedback.
Exceptionless 1.4 brings with it both server and client changes, a new client integration, some minor updates, and lots of bug fixes. Check out the changelog items below, and let us know if you have any questions.
We want to extend our thanks again to the developers that have worked on the project since we went open source a few weeks ago. See their contributions below, along with links to their GitHub profiles.
The app will now be displayed in full screen mode on iOS devices (via Add to Home Screen).
Added the ability to view the status page while in maintenance mode.
Added the ability disable error processing on the error controller.
Various usability improvements dealing with chart date-range selection.
Added documentation link on the sidebar.
Added checks to limit the number of max results returned from various API methods.
Add new indexes to help performance and fix some inefficient queries.
Changed the way we are filtering fixed and hidden errors to be more efficient.
Updated all indexes to be created in the background if they don't already exist.
Switched the JavaScriptEngineSwitcher to use JurassicJsEngine. Jurassic has no external dependencies on IE or Windows specific libraries.
Fixed a race condition that would throw an exception when updating stats.
Fixed a bug where the EnforceRetentionLimitsAction was returning all the query results and then paging them.
The upgrade script now upgrades the database in a background thread.
Fixed a bug where an error with no stack trace wouldn't be processed.
Fixed a bug where the list loading indicators could spin non-stop.
Fixed a bug where errors could be stored with the incorrect DateTimeOffset. This caused inconsistencies between charts and list data.
Fixed a bug where the error stack's tags were not being synced with the error instances.
Fixed a bug where the terms and privacy links could point to the wrong domain.
Fixed a bug where a UriFormatException could be thrown when viewing an error occurrence. This could be caused by third party obfuscators that create a new pdb file.
Updated the UpgradableJsonMediaTypeFormatter to handle errors gracefully.
Fixed a bug where the EncodingDelegatingHandler could throw an exception when there was no request content.
Just over six months ago, we launched Exceptionless with a mission to impact the coding community in a positive way. The goal was, and still is, to help developers find, track, and squash errors, ultimately creating better code for users.
A few days ago we officially hit 1000 accounts, and as of today Exceptionless has reported 8,562,499 errors! We couldn't be more excited!
Sure, we're busier than ever now, answering emails, conversing with open source contributors on new features, and working on new features ourselves, but seeing something grow this quickly, that we've put so much work into, leaves us with little room to complain. The only real thing we can do is say thank you.
We'd like to thank all of our users for using the service, providing feedback, asking the hard questions that make us realize we need to make tweaks here and there, and providing us with direction.
Also, we would specifically like to thank our beta testers that were with us from the beginning. You know who you are, and without you Exceptionless simply would not be the tool it is today.
And, of course, we have to thank everyone that has contributed to and forked the project since we went open source a few weeks ago. 39 forks, 124 GitHub stars, and a NancyFX client so far - not bad!
"Nancy is a lightweight, low-ceremony, framework for building HTTP based services on .Net and Mono. The goal of the framework is to stay out of the way as much as possible and provide a super-duper-happy-path to all interactions."
Built from the ground up (not simply a DSL on another framework)
Removed underlying framework limitations and feature hacks
Removed need to reference assemblies you don't need, keeping things light
Ability to run anywhere, including ASP.NET/IIS, WCF, self hosted, and any OWIN out of the box
Super lightweight action declarations for GET, HEAD, PUT, POST, DELETE, OPTIONS and PATCH requests
View engine integration for Spark, Razor, dotLiquid, SuperSimpleViewEngine, and others
Request path matching with advanced parameter capabilities, plus the ability to replace the path matching strategy with custom implementations for your needs
Easy response syntax, enabling you to return things like int, string, HttpStatusCode and Action elements without having to explicitly cast or wrap your response - you just return it and Nancy will do the work for you
A powerful, light-weight, testing framework to help you verify the behavior of your application
Since we officially announced that Exceptionless was going open source last week, we wanted to provide everyone with a quick and easy video walkthrough of how to get up and running locally.
It's really quick, as you can see from the below video. Below the video is also a textual walkthrough. Please take a look and let us know if you have any questions.
Please note that before contributing to the Exceptionless project, you must read and sign the Exceptionless Contribution License Agreement. Pull requests will not be accepted otherwise.
We are super excited to announce that we are open sourcing the Exceptionless code! That's right, now you can hack on our real-time error reporting tool yourself.
Too many apps are throwing too many errors out there, resulting in confused users, lost business, and endless frustration.
We believe Exceptionless can help the development community become more in-tune with their code by making those errors more transparent, trackable, and squashable. More importantly, we want to support developers building and shipping better code for their users.
You'll find instructions on getting started there, including setting up your hosting environment if you want to host things yourself. If you would rather host with us, we offer easy and affordable plans.
If you have a feature request or issue, let us know on the issue tracker. We are 100% committed to supporting the project.
In short, we want to see what the community can do with our baby, which we consider a great development tool. The open source movement has provided innovation throughout the industry, and we cannot tell you how excited we are to be a part of it.
We hope you will take it, add to it, suggest great new features, and report bugs, but most of all we hope you will use it to build better apps for the world.
The Exceptionless Team will continue to work on a road map of features and improvements, all while providing support to developers that want to contribute.
We have spent a lot of time on Exceptionless, but together with the community we can take it to the next level. Check out the GitHub repo today, and happy coding!
Exceptionless 1.3 brings with it both server and client changes, including open sourcing the project (which we're super excited about!), some minor updates, and a few bug fixes. Check out the changelog items below, and let us know if you have any questions.
Extended data key names are now shown with friendly formatted name.
Summary notification emails that were not sent out and are older than two days will be ignored by the email job. This will help prevent users from being spammed in some circumstances.
Fixed a major application start up performance bug that had to do with dependency injection.
Fixed a bug that was causing the key-up event to be cancelled on every page that had a chart. This affected modals from working properly in some scenarios.
The following improvements were made specifically to make local development and internal deployments easier.
Added the ability to add or remove a user from the admin role.
When you are running exceptionless in development mode and you are the first user to signup for an account; a new sample project with a sample api key will be created.
When billing is not configured, all new organizations will be placed in an unlimited plan.
This is yet another story of an elusive bug that, without a proper error reporting service, would have gone un-noticed for a very long time.
When third-party software and services interact with your code, in any way, you have to be wary that their data may be different from yours. In this instance, our client was parsing some XML that included an unfriendly cookie name. Lets see what happened next...
Listrak is a pretty cool company that provides, among other things, a robust email marketing, shopping cart abandonment, and welcome series suite of tools.
One of their cookies uses a "$" in it's name ($ListrakFoo or similar). When the client's XML Config packages were executed, that $ was causing an XML parsing exception.
That's not customer facing. What's the big deal? #
37,000
While not directly customer facing, it was happening on almost every page of the website and occurred something like 37,000 times in the span of it's existence.
Sluggish
Along with the sheer number of occurrences, it was also noticeably slowing the site down.
The fix was relatively simple. The client now checks for "$" in cookie names within the affected method and just doesn't handle them.
Tracking errors like this is what we're all about. There are hundreds of thousands, probably even millions, of bugs out there right now that throw exceptions every day but manage to remain hidden in the shadows of code written by professional developers.
It's not a sign of poor programming, it simply comes with the territory. You will have bugs, big and small, in every project you work on. The difference is, with Exceptionless, you can actually be aware of, and fix, them!
Do you have a story where our software helped you track down and squash an elusive error? Let us know! We'll publish the details and link back to your app, if you like.
Maybe you've got this awesome new web app that you're ready to go live with, or maybe you're working on a project that is already customer facing but you've got major new features rolling out and want to make sure all goes well.
We both know there's going to be something that isn't completely right after launch. It might be a big bug stopping certain users from placing orders on your site, or it might be something that won't even affect your customers. It might be highly visible, or completely hidden from your view. Either way, you want to know when that error occurs and what the details are. That's where Exceptionless comes in.
The Exceptionless platform provides a great real-time dashboard view of your errors, but our email notifications allow you to be absolutely in touch with any errors that may be occurring within your application.
There are several email notification options for your app's exceptions.
To receive notifications, you need to turn them on under the "My Account" section, in the "Profile Information" tab. This option should be on by default. Then, you can view the below options under the individual project settings by clicking on the cog/gear icon next to the project name at the top of your dashboard.
Lets take a look at the different options:
Daily Project Summary
This is simply a summary of your project, including error counts, etc, that you can receive each day.
Critical Errors
You can mark an individual error as critical, and then check this box to receive email notifications each time that error occurs.
Error Regressions
If you have marked an error as fixed, you can check this to get an email notification if it ever rears it's ugly head again.
Error Occurrence Notification Frequency
These are fairly self-explanatory. How often would you like to receive emails?
All Occurrences
New Only
Never
_Note: _You can also turn notifications off for individual errors by going to Options>>Disable Notifications while inside a specific error.
As usual, we've been working on ways to improve the Exceptionless service.
Exceptionless 1.4 brings with it both server and client changes, a new client integration, some minor updates, and lots of bug fixes. Check out the changelog items below, and let us know if you have any questions.
Just over six months ago, we launched Exceptionless with a mission to impact the coding community in a positive way. The goal was, and still is, to help developers find, track, and squash errors, ultimately creating better code for users.
We've had our first substantial pull request!
It's a big day at Exceptionless.
