This add-on is operated by Bugsnag Inc

Focused and powerful error monitoring for web, mobile, and server apps

Last updated March 01, 2018

Bugsnag is an add-on for tracking your application’s exceptions in production.

Bugsnag lets you know which exceptions are happening most frequently, which users are affected, and what kinds of inputs cause problems. We notify you by email, PagerDuty, and Slack the first time an exception happens and include enough information that you can find and fix bugs quickly and easily. We also integrate with bugtrackers and project management tools like Github Issues, Pivotal Tracker and JIRA so that your entire team can see what needs to be fixed.

Bugsnag is accessible via an API and has supported client libraries for Ruby, Python, Node.js, Java, and many other languages.

Provisioning the add-on

Bugsnag can be attached to a Heroku application via the CLI:

$ heroku addons:create bugsnag
-----> Adding bugsnag to sharp-mountain-4005... done, v18 ($39/mo)

Once Bugsnag has been added a BUGSNAG_API_KEY setting will be available in the app configuration and will contain the api key needed to talk to the bugsnag API. This can be confirmed using the heroku config:get command.

$ heroku config:get BUGSNAG_API_KEY
70d9b0852a968b1d0d0e329b5507f287

Most of the Bugsnag client libraries will automatically read this environment variable and will start sending unhandled exceptions to Bugsnag as soon as they are deployed.

Local setup

Environment setup

If you want to test Bugsnag in development you need to export the same BUGSNAG_API_KEY as we have provisioned in production.

Use the Heroku Local command-line tool to configure, run and manage process types specified in your app’s Procfile. Heroku Local reads configuration variables from a .env file. To view all of your app’s config vars, type heroku config. Use the following command to add the BUGSNAG_API_KEY values retrieved from heroku config to your .env file.

$ heroku config -s | grep BUGSNAG_API_KEY >> .env
$ more .env

A slightly less portable way of achieving the same thing is to just export BUGSNAG_API_KEY=value in a terminal before starting your app.

For more information, see the Heroku Local article.

Using with supported languages

Bugsnag supports over 50 programming languages and platforms. For a complete list and instructions on how to integrate, please see the Bugsnag platform documentation.

Dashboard

The Bugsnag dashboard allows you to see which exceptions are currently affecting your app, how frequently, and how severely. You can use it as a debugging tool for finding out what conditions cause exceptions, a todo list for prioritizing which bugs to fix, or a status page that gives you a feel for how buggy or not your app is.

The dashboard can be accessed via the CLI:

$ heroku addons:open bugsnag
Opening bugsnag for sharp-mountain-4005…

or by visiting the Heroku Dashboard and selecting the application in question. Select Bugsnag from the Add-ons menu.

Troubleshooting

If you do not seem to be seeing any exceptions in Bugsnag, it’s worth checking that you have installed the notifier library and it is configured correctly.

For Rails apps, for example, this can be done by running our rake task.

$ heroku run rake bugsnag:test_exception

For other languages and platforms, just add a manual Bugsnag notification call to your app.

Migrating between plans

Use the heroku addons:upgrade command to migrate to a new plan.

$ heroku addons:upgrade bugsnag:full
-----> Upgrading bugsnag:full to sharp-mountain-4005... done, v18 ($99/mo)
       Your plan has been updated to: bugsnag:full

Removing the add-on

Bugsnag can be removed via the CLI.

$ heroku addons:destroy bugsnag
-----> Removing bugsnag from sharp-mountain-4005... done, v20 ($39/mo)

Before removing Bugsnag you can download any data you want to keep using the API.

Support

All Bugsnag support and runtime issues should be submitted via one of the Heroku Support channels. Any non-support related issues or product feedback is welcome by email.