Rails exception notifier — add to database

Question

We have exception notifier set up on our server, though would like a back-up solution, if the email server is down, that would let us log exceptions in the database.

How is exception notifier listening to every method call and can I listen too?

Or.. is there a gem that already does both sending emails and logging to the database for exceptions?

Answer 1

Your best bet, using Exception Notifier, would be to use rescue_from within your ApplicationController looking for all exceptions, then do bother your logging and a manual call to Exception Notifier.

Example:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  rescue_from Exception, :with => :log_and_notify

  def log_and_notify(error)
    # Save to the DB

    # This manual call example is straight from the Exception Notifier github page.
    ExceptionNotifier::Notifier.exception_notification(request.env, exception, :data => {:message => "was doing something wrong"}).deliver
  end
end

So if a controller gets an error during one of it's actions, it will go to this method, and you can save it to the DB before delivering the email.