Node.js - Google Cloud Stackdriver Error Reporting Examples

Errors usually happen on applications. Developers need to keep track the errors in order to find the cause and fix them if needed. Printing the errors is what usually we done. But imagine if we have a large applications with various kinds of errors. It's not an easy thing to read the error one by one and we may also skip some errors.

That's why we need error reporting system that can collect errors and display them in a more organized way, so that we can read the errors easily. One of available error reporting services is Google Cloud Error Reporting, which is a part of their Stackdriver service. Basically, it collects and displays all the errors sent by application. This tutorial is about how to use Google Cloud Error Reporting service for your Node.js application.

Preparation

1. Create or select a Google Cloud project

A Google Cloud project is required to use this service. Open Google Cloud console, then create a new project or select existing project

2. Enable billing for the project

Like other cloud platforms, Google requires you to enable billing for your project. If you haven't set up billing, open billing page.

3. Enable Cloud Error Reporting API

To use an API, you must enable it first. Open this page to enable Cloud Error Reporting API.

4. Set up service account for authentication

As for authentication, you need to create a new service account. Create a new one on the service account management page and download the credentials, or you can use your already created service account.

In your .env file, you have to add a new variable

GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=/path/to/the/credentials

Dependencies

This tutorial uses @google-cloud/error-reporting and also dotenv for loading environment. Add the following dependencies to your package.json and run npm install

  "@google-cloud/error-reporting": "~0.5.1"
  "dotenv": "~4.0.0"

Code Examples

Let's start to use error-reporting in Node.js application. As we use @google-cloud/error-reporting, first we create an instane of ErrorReporting.

  require('dotenv').config();
  
  const { ErrorReporting } = require('@google-cloud/error-reporting');
  
  // Create an instance of ErrorReporting
  const errors = new ErrorReporting({
    ignoreEnvironmentCheck: true,
  });

The ignoreEnvironmentCheck option above is set to true. If false or not set, it will only communiate with the Google service if NODE_ENV equals production. Below is the list of supported configs you can pass to the constructor.

{
  service: String,
  version: String,
}

  // Report an error event
  const errorEvent = errors.event();
  errorEvent.setMessage('My error message');
  errorEvent.setUser('user1');
  errors.report(errorEvent);
  
  // Report an Error object
  errors.report(new Error('My error message'));

  const errorFunction = () => {
    throw new Error('This is an error');
  };

  try {
    errorFunction();
  } catch (error) {
    errors.report(error);
  }

  const errorFunctionPromise = () => Promise.reject(new Error('This is a Promise error'));
  
  errorFunctionPromise()
    .catch(errors.report);