I was wondering how to collect crash from exceptions and getting useful values from it.
Any class doing that for Mac?
We once made a BugReporter Kit for that at MBS.
I had made an app that generates the code / project parts to drop in App.UnhandledException to report exceptions, their stack, platform details, and comments directly to MantisBT. However, when trying to gauge community interest it didnāt seem like a commercially viable release.
Whatever method you go about it, I would recommend against āemail the report by SMTPSocketā because of modern internet problems. My suggestion is to use a URLConnection and send yourself the report to a listener, whether that be your own web app or a tracker like MantisBT.
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Interesting. My idea is to send the data to a MySQL server
If itās a desktop application that youāre sharing publicly, you wonāt want your credentials for a SMTP server or a database server to be embedded inside the app. If your app has embedded credentials and a malicious party were to find them, they could abuse your systems.
Another concern is that the userās security settings must allow communication on the ports you plan to use. While security settings will differ, itās most common to find ports 80 and 443 open for HTTP/S communication.
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TIm is correct. You should use some kind of REST mechanism over HTTPS sending JSON or XML contents with some kind of mutant check key with TTL for validation. If check fails, maybe someone is trying some sort of attack, so ignore the contents. If ok, register the report received.
In case you get some stupid hacker wasting time to penetrate your barrier, the max he will get is recording lots of garbage reports, not deleting your database or stealing data from there.
If the database is protected with user privileges and dedicated password, the risk is low. you can only see some garbage stuff, but you can also run a script to clear it.
Disconnecting direct access is a ābest practiceā. A hacker with direct access to a DB port can find a way to circumvent your privilege restriction, like injecting new users without restriction and logging on them.
First of all, these need to be clearly defined, as there are limits depending on what you want.
Xojo Exceptions,
@Tim_Parnell has you covered there in being able to retrieve this information and have it returned to you.
NSExceptions and application crashes.
NSExceptions are exceptions within Appleās frameworks, these generally come from either the Xojo framework, a plugin or declares. These typically occur with OS updates, major, minor, bug fixes as itās when Apple has changed something that Xojo or plugin vendor isnāt aware of.
Crashes are when the OS terminates the application for whatever reason.
These reports (crashes and exceptions) are not available to you for security reasons, however there are exceptions.
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If the application comes from the Mac App Store, these reports are collated, cleaned and presented to you through App Store connect, this process is NOT instant and can take upto a month for a crash report to appear.
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If the app is distributed outside of the App Store and the customer is logged in with an Admin account, you can retrieve the files yourself. Regular accounts are prohibited from diagnostic information, again for security.
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Your telephone. Seriously, bear with me. Email is a close second. And Iām not talking about automated stuff. When your app ends with a fatal unhandled exception, include your phone number and email address on the MessageBox. When they get you on the phone, or when you respond in an actually meaningful (non-automated) way to their email, it is incredible how many folks will be so happy to know that they have your actual attention that they will let you send them a zillion special test versions of your app loaded with all manner of printf debugging, which theyāll be happy to use to recreate the problem, and the output of which theyāll happily screenshot or email or fax or carrier pigeon or otherwise get back to you. Seriously, they will become your ally if they believe you are trying to solve the problem. Who among us gives any faith to the automated popups with messages like āApp āblablablaā just crashed. Hang on while we collect diagnostic data to send to (Microsoft / Apple / Joe Developer)ā?
I used to send data to a Mysql database but it was quite difficult to handle, group and filter exceptions when my app started having hundreds of thousands monthly active users.
Iāve been using sentry.io for the past year and I am extremely pleased with it.
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Sentry is the way to go. Check out Glitchtip, which is a free alternative that is fully Sentry SDK compliant. Can be easily installed via Docker on a dedicated server. Have been using it for more than a year . Sentry.io can get expensive or limiting pretty fast.
Cheers
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I hadnāt heard about Glitchtip before so many thanks for sharing. It looks like Sentry.io also provides a free self-hosted version just like Glitchtip, so theoretically if you want to own the infrastructure and labor costs, both would be āfreeā.
While they are both free in theory, you wont have much fun setting up Sentry onPremise on your own server. Sentry.io includes their application monitoring platform, that is why it is far more demanding when it comes to hardware and resources. They are targeting the enterprise and the self hosted solution will quickly be far more expensive than getting a monthly plan from them. Also setup is complicated and a real mess. Updates are a nightmare. I have done it 
Glichtip is a scaled down version, that mainly concentrates on error reporting and uptime right now. They are slowly building out new features. Docker setup is easy. Running it on your own hardware is cheaper than getting a Sentry monthly plan and offers you unlimited reporting + no data caps.
This is great info Alexander and it definitely sounds like Glitchtip might be the easier and lower effort of the two.
How are you integrating Glitchtip into your Xojo apps? Do you know if there a wrapper or plugin for plug and play use like Mike Cotrone has created for Sentry.io?
You can use the same tools used for Sentry.io, the SDKs are compliant. Glitchtip stays uptodate with changes. Using it for python, go, php , js / nodejs and many others without any problem.
You can use the integration from @Jeremie_L https://github.com/jkleroy/XojoSentry
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Once again youāre a wealth of knowledge and thanks for chiming in on Glitchtip. It definitely sounds like the way to go especially with Jeremieās client.
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