Official Airbrake Notifier for Node.js

The official Airbrake notifier for capturing JavaScript errors in Node.js and reporting them to Airbrake. If you're looking for browser support, there is a separate package.

Installation

Using yarn:

yarn add @airbrake/node

Using npm:

npm install @airbrake/node

Basic Usage

First, initialize the notifier with the project ID and project key taken from Airbrake. To find your project_id and project_key navigate to your project's Settings and copy the values from the right sidebar:

const { Notifier } = require('@airbrake/node');

const airbrake = new Notifier({
  projectId: 1,
  projectKey: 'REPLACE_ME',
  environment: 'production',
});

Then, you can send a textual message to Airbrake:

let promise = airbrake.notify(`user id=${user_id} not found`);
promise.then((notice) => {
  if (notice.id) {
    console.log('notice id', notice.id);
  } else {
    console.log('notify failed', notice.error);
  }
});

or report errors directly:

try {
  throw new Error('Hello from Airbrake!');
} catch (err) {
  airbrake.notify(err);
}

Alternatively, you can wrap any code which may throw errors using the wrap method:

let startApp = () => {
  throw new Error('Hello from Airbrake!');
};
startApp = airbrake.wrap(startApp);

// Any exceptions thrown in startApp will be reported to Airbrake.
startApp();

or use the call shortcut:

let startApp = () => {
  throw new Error('Hello from Airbrake!');
};

airbrake.call(startApp);

Example configurations

• Express
• Node.js

Advanced Usage

Notice Annotations

It's possible to annotate error notices with all sorts of useful information at the time they're captured by supplying it in the object being reported.

try {
  startApp();
} catch (err) {
  airbrake.notify({
    error: err,
    context: { component: 'bootstrap' },
    environment: { env1: 'value' },
    params: { param1: 'value' },
    session: { session1: 'value' },
  });
}

Severity

Severity allows categorizing how severe an error is. By default, it's set to error. To redefine severity, simply overwrite context/severity of a notice object:

airbrake.notify({
  error: err,
  context: { severity: 'warning' },
});

Filtering errors

There may be some errors thrown in your application that you're not interested in sending to Airbrake, such as errors thrown by 3rd-party libraries.

The Airbrake notifier makes it simple to ignore this chaff while still processing legitimate errors. Add filters to the notifier by providing filter functions to addFilter.

addFilter accepts the entire error notice to be sent to Airbrake and provides access to the context, environment, params, and session properties. It also includes the single-element errors array with its backtrace property and associated backtrace lines.

The return value of the filter function determines whether or not the error notice will be submitted.

• If null is returned, the notice is ignored.
• Otherwise, the returned notice will be submitted.

An error notice must pass all provided filters to be submitted.

In the following example all errors triggered by admins will be ignored:

airbrake.addFilter((notice) => {
  if (notice.params.admin) {
    // Ignore errors from admin sessions.
    return null;
  }
  return notice;
});

Filters can be also used to modify notice payload, e.g. to set the environment and application version:

airbrake.addFilter((notice) => {
  notice.context.environment = 'production';
  notice.context.version = '1.2.3';
  return notice;
});

Filtering keys

With the keysBlocklist option, you can specify a list of keys containing sensitive information that must be filtered out:

const airbrake = new Notifier({
  // ...
  keysBlocklist: [
    'password', // exact match
    /secret/, // regexp match
  ],
});

Node.js request and proxy

To use the request HTTP client, pass the request option which accepts a request wrapper:

const airbrake = new Notifier({
  // ...
  request: request.defaults({ proxy: 'http://localproxy.com' }),
});

Instrumentation

@airbrake/node attempts to automatically instrument various performance metrics. You can disable that behavior using the performanceStats option:

const airbrake = new Notifier({
  // ...
  performanceStats: false,
});

Filtering performance data

addPerformanceFilter allows for filtering performance data. Return null in the filter to prevent that metric from being reported to Airbrake.

airbrake.addPerformanceFilter((metric) => {
  if (metric.route === '/foo') {
    // Requests to '/foo' will not be reported
    return null;
  }
  return metric;
});