BugsVoice updated: Ruby error trapping example, statistics and more
We just published an update to BugsVoice online service, which mainly enhances the usability of the templates and rules refinement process.
Now the server script generation page contains also an example for Ruby developers, contributed by Andrea Nucci – thank you!
We also introduced bug collection statistics with some nice graphical representation, as you can see in the picture.
We added cookies for logins, fixed a bug in character encoding, and made the defaults on templates richer.
Thanks to a usability test by Roberto, documented here, we simplified improving templates and rules, so to supply and get better feedback.
“Error messaging is customer support” thesis
This interesting article from Carsonfied’s blog, 10 Tips on Writing Hero-worthy Error Messages by Christine Brodigan gives some good reasons for adopting a good error trapping and serving solution, which is actually a good reason to adopt BugsVoice.
BugsVoice for .NET developers
.NET MVC error page
Thanks to Massimo Iacolare’s contribution, we have just published an example error trapping page for .NET MVC applications that makes it easier to integrate them with BugsVoice’s service. Get the example here:
http://bugsvoice.com/applications/bugsVoice/site/examples/errorNETMVC.zip
An example for Java was already available, PHP and Ruby are forthcoming. Why don’t you contribute yours? You get a full year of BugsVoice for free.
Setting up an example error trapping page
For every application technology and/or web server an example error page can be set up to help other users of the same technology.
If you contribute an error trapping example page for a technology and it gets accepted and published on BugsVoice site, you get a full year of free usage. You must release your page example under MIT license or wider.
Assuming you are enrolled and familiar to BugsVoice basic error page serving and feedback collecting, which works for all technologies and web servers J, in order to provide a more complete example for your favorite technology we suggest you to first of all take a look at the errorJava.jsp page which you can download from the rule editor in BugsVoice.
Your example page should:
- Give help on how to centralize errors
- Supply examples on how to get the values you want to submit to BugsVoice
1. Give help on how to centralize errors
The provided example for Java gives these hints, in a commented out initial part:
Before you get errors in your BugsVoice account, you must trap all the errors of your application. To introduce a global error handler, you can modify your application
web.xml adding these lines:
<web-app>
<!– ….. –>
<error-page>
<error-code>404</error-code>
<location>/error.jsp</location>
</error-page><error-page>
<exception-type>java.lang.Throwable</exception-type>
<location>/error.jsp</location>
</error-page>
<!– ….. –>
</web-app>
This done, you can use this JSP as “error,jsp”.
This is the standard way errors are trapped in Java; of course advanced developers can customize this behavior.
You should provide something similar, the “default” way of centralizing errors for your technology.
2. Supply examples on how to get the values you want to submit to BugsVoice
The provided example for Java computes the server date this way:
//get server time
SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat(“yyyy MM dd HH:mm:ss”);
String serverTime = sdf.format(new Date());
Which is then used in feeding the form submitted to BugsVoice this way:
<textarea name=”serverDate”><%=serverTime%></textarea>
On your page you should proceed in a similar vein; the set of properties which you can send is listed on the “configure error trapping” page, at the bottom.
Thanks for contributing!
