ErrorTracker vs. The Rest: Choosing the Right Error Monitoring Tool

Integrate ErrorTracker: Step-by-Step Setup for DevelopersError tracking is an essential part of modern software development. Properly integrated tools help you find, prioritize, and fix bugs faster, reduce downtime, and improve user experience. This guide walks developers through a pragmatic, step-by-step integration of ErrorTracker — covering project preparation, installation, configuration, common patterns, workflows, and best practices to get meaningful value quickly.

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What is ErrorTracker and why integrate it?

ErrorTracker is an error monitoring and observability tool that captures unhandled exceptions, logs, and contextual metadata from applications across platforms. Integrating ErrorTracker enables you to:

• Collect real-time error events and stack traces.
• Group similar errors to reduce noise.
• Prioritize issues by frequency, affected users, and impact.
• Investigate using breadcrumbs, logs, and request context.
• Act with alerts, integrations, and automated workflows.

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Before you start: planning and prerequisites

1. Access and credentials
   • Create an ErrorTracker account and obtain a project DSN or API key.
2. Define goals
   • Decide what you want to monitor (production only? staging? background jobs?).
   • Determine alerting thresholds and SLOs to avoid noise.
3. Inventory components
   • List services and platforms: web frontend, mobile apps, backend APIs, serverless functions, cron jobs.
4. Secure configuration
   • Plan for PII/data-scrubbing, rate limits, and environment isolation (separate projects for prod/stage).
5. Choose SDKs and integrations
   • Identify ErrorTracker SDKs for your stack (JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, Java, Go, Ruby, .NET, mobile, etc.) and any platform-specific plugins (Express, Django, Rails, React, React Native, Next.js, etc.).

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Step 1 — Create projects and environments

• Create one ErrorTracker project per major application or service to keep events scoped and manageable.
• Use environment tags (production, staging, development) to separate data.
• Configure project-level notification rules and rate limits.

Example structure:

• frontend-web (prod/stage)
• backend-api (prod/stage)
• mobile-ios (prod)
• mobile-android (prod)

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Step 2 — Install the SDK

Choose the SDK for your runtime and install it using the package manager. Examples:

JavaScript (Node / Browser)

npm install @errortracker/sdk 

Python (server)

pip install errortracker-sdk 

Java (Maven)

<dependency>   <groupId>com.errortracker</groupId>   <artifactId>errortracker-sdk</artifactId>   <version>1.2.3</version> </dependency> 

Mobile (React Native)

npm install @errortracker/react-native 

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Step 3 — Initialize the SDK with configuration

Initialize early in your application lifecycle so it captures startup errors.

Node/Express example:

const ErrorTracker = require('@errortracker/sdk'); ErrorTracker.init({   dsn: process.env.ERRORTRACKER_DSN,   environment: process.env.NODE_ENV || 'development',   release: process.env.RELEASE_VERSION,   sampleRate: 0.25, // capture 25% of events if you need sampling   beforeSend(event) {     // scrub sensitive fields     if (event.request && event.request.headers) {       delete event.request.headers['authorization'];     }     return event;   } }); // optional: attach request handler for Express app.use(ErrorTracker.Handlers.requestHandler()); app.use(ErrorTracker.Handlers.errorHandler()); 

Python/Django example:

import errortracker_sdk errortracker_sdk.init(     dsn=os.environ.get("ERRORTRACKER_DSN"),     environment=os.environ.get("ENVIRONMENT", "development"),     release=os.environ.get("RELEASE_VERSION"),     max_breadcrumbs=50, ) 

Key initialization options to consider:

• dsn/apiKey: required to send events to the right project.
• environment: production/staging/dev.
• release: tie errors to a deploy version.
• sample rate: control event volume.
• integrations/plugins: framework-specific middleware.
• beforeSend or callbacks: scrub or enrich events.

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Step 4 — Capture errors and enrich context

Out of the box, the SDK captures unhandled exceptions and unhandled promise rejections (JavaScript), uncaught exceptions (Node/Python/Java), and native crashes (mobile). You should also:

• Manually capture handled exceptions where you need additional context.
• Add breadcrumbs for important lifecycle events (user actions, DB queries, network requests).
• Attach tags and user context to help grouping and triage.

Examples:

Manual capture (JavaScript)

try {   riskyOperation(); } catch (err) {   ErrorTracker.captureException(err, {     tags: { feature: 'checkout' },     extra: { cartId: cart.id, userPlan: user.plan }   }); } 

Set user context:

ErrorTracker.setUser({ id: user.id, email: user.email, username: user.username }); 

Add breadcrumb:

ErrorTracker.addBreadcrumb({   category: 'auth',   message: 'User attempted login',   level: 'info' }); 

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Step 5 — Instrument performance and transactions (optional)

If ErrorTracker supports performance monitoring, enable tracing to measure latency and root-cause slowdowns.

Node/Express example:

ErrorTracker.init({ dsn, tracesSampleRate: 0.1 }); app.use(ErrorTracker.Handlers.tracingHandler()); 

Start and finish manual transactions:

const tx = ErrorTracker.startTransaction({ op: 'task', name: 'processOrder' }); try {   await processOrder(); } finally {   tx.finish(); } 

Sampling settings (tracesSampleRate) control volume; start low in production and increase as needed.

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Step 6 — Configure source maps and releases (frontend)

To get readable stack traces for minified JS, upload source maps and associate errors with releases.

• Build pipeline: generate source maps (webpack, esbuild, etc.).
• Upload maps to ErrorTracker during CI/CD.
• Set release/version during SDK init.

CI example (pseudo)

ERRORTRACKER_RELEASE=$(git rev-parse --short HEAD) errortracker-cli releases new $ERRORTRACKER_RELEASE errortracker-cli releases files $ERRORTRACKER_RELEASE upload-sourcemaps ./dist --rewrite errortracker-cli releases finalize $ERRORTRACKER_RELEASE 

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Step 7 — Logging integration

Link structured logs to error events for better context.

• Add a log forwarding integration (e.g., via a log shipper or agent).
• Use the SDK to attach recent logs as breadcrumbs or event extras.
• Correlate with trace IDs or event IDs in logs.

Example: include ErrorTracker event ID in server logs:

app.use((req, res, next) => {   res.on('finish', () => {     const eventId = ErrorTracker.lastEventId();     console.log(JSON.stringify({ status: res.statusCode, errortrackerEventId: eventId }));   });   next(); }); 

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Step 8 — Alerts, workflows, and integrations

Set up alerting to route issues to the right teams without noise:

• Create rules: notify on new issue, regressions, or spike in event rate.
• Integrate with Slack, PagerDuty, Microsoft Teams, email, or GitHub.
• Configure escalation policies and on-call rotations.
• Use issue creation integrations to open tickets automatically.

Alert tuning tips:

• Alert on new high-severity issues and regressions first.
• Use rate-based thresholds for noisy errors.
• Silence non-actionable environment types (development).

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Step 9 — Triage and ownership workflow

A good workflow reduces time-to-fix:

• Assign owners: use code ownership rules or tags to route to the right team/component.
• Use severity and impact to prioritize (affected users, frequency, business impact).
• Link errors to commits/releases to find code suspects quickly.
• Close issues via commits or in the ErrorTracker UI once fixed.

Example triage steps:

1. Reproduce locally or via replay.
2. Inspect stack trace, breadcrumbs, request body, and logs.
3. Identify commit or PR likely responsible.
4. Create fix and link release; verify in staging before closing.

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Step 10 — Maintenance and cost control

• Review sample rates and data retention periodically.
• Archive or mute low-value noisy issues; use inbound filters to block known non-actionable patterns.
• Rotate project keys and monitor usage.
• Keep SDKs updated to capture framework improvements and security fixes.

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Common pitfalls and how to avoid them

• Over-instrumenting and high volume: use sampling and environment filters.
• Missing PII scrubbing: implement beforeSend hooks and server-side scrubbing.
• No release tagging: without releases, grouping to commits is harder.
• Alert fatigue: tune thresholds and create meaningful grouping rules.
• Not instrumenting background jobs: include workers, cron jobs, and serverless.

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Example checklist to complete integration

• [ ] Create ErrorTracker project(s) and environments
• [ ] Install and initialize SDK in each service
• [ ] Set environment, release, and sample rates
• [ ] Add user and breadcrumbs where helpful
• [ ] Upload source maps for frontend builds
• [ ] Integrate logging and tracing if available
• [ ] Configure alerting rules and team integrations
• [ ] Define triage process and ownership
• [ ] Monitor volume and adjust sampling/filters

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Conclusion

A well-integrated ErrorTracker setup provides faster detection, better context for debugging, and a structured workflow for resolving issues. Start with baseline automatic captures, add targeted manual instrumentation where it matters, and iterate on sampling, alerts, and ownership to keep noise low and signal high.