Capturing Errors

Once initialized in your code, the Sentry SDK will capture various types of events and notify you about them in real-time, depending on the alert rules you've configured. With the Django app already running on your localhost, let's try them out.

Unhandled Errors

The Sentry SDK will automatically capture and report any unhandled error that happens in your application runtime without any additional configuration or explicit handling. Generally, unhandled errors are errors that aren't caught by any except (or try/catch) clause.

1. In your browser, launch the local Django app in the following endpoint to trigger an unhandled error: http://localhost:8000/unhandled.

2. If you've set up an alert rule, you should be notified about the error. Otherwise, open the Issues page in your Sentry account.

3. Notice the unhandled exception appears in the list of issues.

   

4. Click on the issue, to open the Issue Details page.

   

5. Notice that the event:

   • Is tagged with the environment and release options we've set in the previous tutorial and handled:no, marking this event as an unhandled error

   • Contains a suspect commit, made possible because of the commit tracking feature we enabled previously

   • Contains the custom breadcrumb we added through the SDK

     

Handled Errors

The Sentry SDK contains several methods that you can use to explicitly report errors, events, and custom messages in except clauses, critical areas of your code, and so on.

Capture Exception

1. Open the views.py file. Notice that we import sentry_sdk lib which contains the capture_exception method:

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      import sentry_sdk
   

2. The method is used to capture the exception handled by the except clause in HandledErrorView:

   

3. To try it out on your localhost, trigger the following endpoint: http://localhost:8000/handled.

4. Similar to what we did with the unhandled error, open the new issue's detail page.

5. Notice that the event is tagged with the same environment and release configuration options. Hover over the "i" icon in the release tag to reveal the release information and the commits associated with it.

   

6. Click on the release's "i" icon to navigate to the release page.

Capture Message

Typically, capture_message is not emitted, but there are times when a developer may want to add a simple message within their app for debugging purposes, and capture_message is great for that.

1. In the views.py file, the capture_message method is made available through the sentry_sdk lib import.

2. You can use it anywhere within your app. In our example, we've created a dedicated view class, CaptureMessageView, to trigger and capture a message we want to track:

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      sentry_sdk.capture_message("You caught me!")
   

3. To try it out on your localhost, trigger the following endpoint: http://localhost:8000/message.

4. As before, open the new issue’s detail page from the Issues page.

   

   By default captured messages are marked with a severity level tag level:info, as reflected in the tags section. However, the capture_message methods accept an optional severity level parameter.

5. In the views.py file, change the capture_message method to:

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      sentry_sdk.capture_message("You caught me!", "fatal")
   

6. Save the changes and trigger the /message endpoint again. Changes should be applied immediately through StateReloader.

7. Notice that the severity level tag on the new event now shows level:fatal.

Enriching your Event Data

You can enrich your event and error data through the Sentry SDK by adding custom tags and user context attributes. In addition to providing more context to your errors, those will expand your options to search, filter, and query through your event metadata. Learn more about the advantages of enriching your data in Event Data.

To enrich the data of the message events we've captured with capture_message:

1. In the views.py file, locate the line that triggers sentry_sdk.capture_message.

2. Replace that line with the following code:

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   with sentry_sdk.push_scope() as scope:
      scope.set_tag("my-tag", "my value")
      scope.user = { "email" : "my.email@your.domain.com" }
      scope.set_extra("someVariable", "some data")
   
      sentry_sdk.capture_message("You caught me!", "fatal")
   

   We're using the push_scope method that allows us to send data with one specific event on a local scope. We're setting a custom tag, user context attribute (email), and extra data on the local scope to enrich the data on the message event.

3. Save your changes and trigger the /message endpoint again.

4. Open the issue’s detail page from the Issues page.

5. Notice that:

   • The user email is now displayed on the details page and the number of unique users impacted by this event is reflected in the issue's header.

   • The custom tag is now available (and searchable) in the list of tags.

     

   • The extra data we set on the SDK is reflected in the "ADDITIONAL DATA" context.