Monday 29 April 2013

Get your JS error notifications wherever you like!

Just three days ago, I had launched WebHooks support so that you can view your site's client-side JS errors anywhere you prefer. The trouble with vanilla WebHooks is that everyone has to implement the same sets of hooks for integration with the same services. For example, if two companies need the error to be posted to HipChat, they'd both have to independently develop HipChat integrations on top of Errorception's WebHooks, and then manage and maintain their implementations themselves. Such a pain! So, today, there are two announcements to help ease the pain.

Firstly, using the same underlying stack I'm using for WebHooks, I'll host integrations for most popular services myself so that you don't have do a thing. I'm calling this service hooks, blatantly copying the name from GitHub. Simply go over to your settings, and click on Service Hooks to find the list of services you can already integrate with today. You don't have to write any code to implement the hook. Just fill a form, and you are ready to go.

Currently, I'm launching Campfire, HipChat and PagerDuty integration. Integrations with these services have been asked for before, so I decided to start with these. I expect this list to expand further.

   

What an error looks like on Campfire (left) and HipChat

As interesting as that is, what's even more exciting is how it's implemented, and how it matters to you.

<3 GitHub, <3 open-source

All the code that makes these service hooks possible is all open-source. Check it out on GitHub. Even the documentation on Errorception for these services is driven off README.md files from GitHub! That's just awesome!

There are two reasons I wanted this to be open-source. One of the reasons of course is that I like the transparency with open source. When I'm asking you to enter API tokens for, say, your HipChat account, I want to make it clear to you that I'm not going to misuse it. What better way to convince you than to show you the code itself!

Secondly, and probably more importantly, if you want to see a new service integrated with Errorception, you will be able to do that yourself! Just fork the repo on GitHub, write a small little JS function to implement the integration, and send me a pull request. I'll have it merged in no time, and will immediately be available to everyone. It's really simple! And when I say it's a small little function, I mean it - Have a look at the WebHooks implementation as an example.

I've had a lot of fun planning and coding this release. I hope you make the most of it. And if you want to see your favorite services integrated with Errorception, feel free to give it a shot on GitHub. I'll only be glad to help you along.

Friday 26 April 2013

Announcing WebHooks

Though the Errorception HTTP API is awesome for browsing your errors, it has so far been very hard to get real-time error notifications. There was the hacky solution of polling the API of course, but that's terribly inefficient, and just feels dirty. Today, this gets fixed.

You can now configure WebHooks in your settings, which Errorception will POST to whenever it encounters an error on your site. You can choose if you want to receive POSTs for every occurrence of every error, of the very first time an error occurs.

This has been made available to all projects in Errorception, just like every other feature. Head over to the WebHook docs to learn how to make the most of this feature.

As usual, feedback always welcome! I can't wait to see what you'll be pulling off with this. :)