Elixir integration guide

Typical installation time: 5 minutes

Hi there! You’ve found Honeybadger’s guide to Elixir error tracking and performance monitoring. If you use Phoenix or Plug, go check out the Phoenix Integration Guide. If not, then read on.

This guide will teach you how to install the honeybadger Hex package in your Elixir project and use it to manually report errors to Honeybadger. You can also enable some automatic logging and performance insights (via telemetry) by setting the insights_enabled option to true in your configuration.

On this page:

Installing the package

Add the Honeybadger package to deps/0 in your application’s mix.exs:

defp deps do
  [{:honeybadger, "~> 0.22"}]
end

Then run:

mix do deps.get, deps.compile

Finally, update your app’s config.exs file to include the Honeybadger configuration:

config :honeybadger,
  api_key: "PROJECT_API_KEY",
  environment_name: config_env(),
  insights_enabled: true # Enable logging and performance insights

Tip

You can also configure your API key using the HONEYBADGER_API_KEY environment variable:

export HONEYBADGER_API_KEY="PROJECT_API_KEY"

If you use this method, you can omit the api_key option from your configuration.

See the Configuration reference for additional info.

Testing your installation

Note

Honeybadger does not report errors in dev and test environments by default. To enable reporting in development environments, temporarily add exclude_envs: [] to your Honeybadger config.

To test your installation, fire up iex -S mix, then run:

Honeybadger.notify("Hello Elixir!")

If Honeybadger is configured correctly, you should see a new error report in your Honeybadger project dashboard.

Configuring Elixir’s logger

When configured, Honeybadger will report errors for any SASL-compliant processes when they crash. Just set the use_logger option to true in your application’s config.exs and you’re good to go:

config :honeybadger,
  use_logger: true

Manually reporting errors

You can use the Honeybadger.notify/2 function to manually report rescued exceptions:

try do
  # Buggy code goes here
rescue
  exception ->
    Honeybadger.notify(exception, stacktrace: __STACKTRACE__)
end

You can also pass a string message to the notify function (the second argument is optional):

Honeybadger.notify("Sign in failed", metadata: %{
  user_id: current_user.id
})

See Reporting Errors for more information.

Reporting custom events

Use the Honeybadger.event/1 and Honeybadger.event/2 functions to send events to Honeybadger Insights for logging and performance monitoring:

Honeybadger.event(%{
  event_type: "user_created",
  user: user.id
})

# Honeybadger.event/2 is a shorthand that automatically adds the event_type
# property to the event:
Honeybadger.event("project_deleted", %{
  project: project.name
})

See Capturing Logs and Events for more details.

Sending logs from your infrastructure

Honeybadger isn’t just for errors and application data! You can use our syslog, Vector, or PaaS integrations to send additional data from your infrastructure to Honeybadger Insights, where you can query, visualize, and analyze all of your production data in one place.

Version requirements

See Supported Versions.