Collecting user feedback

The Honeybadger gem has a few special tags that it looks for whenever you render an error page in a Rack-based application. These can be used to display extra information about the error, or to ask the user for information about how they triggered the error.

Installing the middleware

Honeybadger installs the middleware automatically in Rails projects. For all other applications, the middleware must be installed manually:

use Honeybadger::Rack::UserInformer
use Honeybadger::Rack::UserFeedback

Displaying the error ID

When an error is sent to Honeybadger, our API returns a unique UUID for the occurrence within your project. This UUID can be automatically displayed for reference on error pages.

To include the error id, simply place this magic HTML comment on your error page (normally public/500.html in Rails):

<!-- HONEYBADGER ERROR -->

By default, we will replace this tag with:

Honeybadger Error {{error_id}}

Where {{error_id}} is the UUID. You can customize this output by overriding the user_informer.info option in your honeybadger.yml file (you can also enabled/disable the middleware):

user_informer:
  enabled: true
  info: "Error ID: {{error_id}}"

You can use that UUID to load the error at the site by going to https://app.honeybadger.io/notice/some-uuid-goes-here.

Displaying a feedback form

When an error is sent to Honeybadger, an HTML form can be generated so users can fill out relevant information that led up to that error. Feedback responses are displayed inline in the comments section on the fault detail page.

To include a user feedback form on your error page, simply add this magic HTML comment (normally public/500.html in Rails):

<!-- HONEYBADGER FEEDBACK -->

You can change the text displayed in the form via the Rails internationalization system. Here’s an example:

en:
  honeybadger:
    feedback:
      heading: "Care to help us fix this?"
      explanation:
        "Any information you can provide will help us fix the problem."
      submit: "Send"
      thanks: "Thanks for the feedback!"
      labels:
        name: "Your name"
        email: "Your email address"
        comment: "Comment (required)"

The feedback form can be enabled and disabled using the feedback.enabled config option (defaults to true):

feedback:
  enabled: true