Breadcrumbs
💡 Breadcrumbs are available since Ruby gem version
2.11.2.Breadcrumbs where initially implemented in our Front-end Javascript library with the idea that it would help debug an issue when you have a trail of breadcrumbs with (user) actions leading up to the error.
We then realized this could also be useful for back-end requests, where you can add a time-ordered list of actions leading up to the error. For example adding breadcrumbs through decision trees that are otherwise not instrumented.
Usage
By default, no breadcrumbs are tracked, but it's really easy to track your own.
Wherever an interesting event, operation or state change occurs in your app, you can leave a breadcrumb like so:
Appsignal.add_breadcrumb("Navigation", "https://example.com", "", { :response => 200 }, Time.now.utc)
Appsignal.add_breadcrumb("Network", "[GET] https://example.com", "", { :response => 500 })
Appsignal.add_breadcrumb("UI", "closed modal(change_password)", "User closed modal without actions")Only the last 20 added breadcrumbs will be added to the current transaction.
Breadcrumb Options
| Option | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| category | String | Category to label the event under |
| action | String | Contextual information related to the event |
| message | String | (optional) A log message or other string to send to AppSignal |
| metadata | Object<String, String> | (optional) An object of metadata related to the event |
| time | Time object | (optional) Time object that responds to .to_i, defaults to Time.utc |