Sentry for Frontend Observability

Introduction

Sentry is a powerful tool that provides observability for frontend applications. It helps developers monitor and fix crashes in real-time, providing insights into errors and performance issues.

Key Concepts

Installation

To integrate Sentry with your frontend application, follow these steps:

1. Sign up for a Sentry account at sentry.io.
2. Create a new project and select the appropriate platform (JavaScript, React, etc.).
3. Install the Sentry SDK via npm or yarn:

npm install @sentry/react @sentry/tracing

Usage

To initialize Sentry in your application, add the following code to your entry point (e.g., index.js):

import * as Sentry from '@sentry/react';
import { Integrations } from '@sentry/tracing';

Sentry.init({
    dsn: 'YOUR_SENTRY_DSN',
    integrations: [
        new Integrations.BrowserTracing({
            tracingOrigins: ["localhost", "https://yourserver.com"],
            // Adjust this value in production, or use * to capture all domains
            routingInstrumentation: Sentry.routingInstrumentation,
        }),
    ],
    tracesSampleRate: 1.0, // Adjust this value in production
});
            

Once initialized, Sentry will automatically capture unhandled exceptions and performance traces.

Best Practices

• Use Sentry’s context features to add extra data to your events.
• Set up alerts for specific error types to respond faster.
• Regularly review and triage issues reported by Sentry.
• Utilize performance monitoring to identify slow transactions.

FAQ