Building the ultimate error email...

Report · Oct 20, 2006

Hello,
I'm using CFERROR to catch exceptions and generate an email to myself. I
use to have all the basic #error.foo# variables in the email, but I wanted
more. So I figured out how you can include most of what is in the
classic.cfm template located in the web-inf/debug/ folder and it will pretty
much send you all the normal debug output you get on a web page with an
error and debug turned on.

Now for the catch, this works great for me with the exception of the newer
CFMX style debug output you see at the top of your debug output. This is
the area where CF actually will display several lines of code in and around
the offending error. For some reason, this port of the debug output is not
available in the classic.cfm file and I can't figure out where to find it.

Has anyone done this? I'm actually very happy just getting the classic CF 5
debut output, but I'd love even more to have the CFMX style output as well.
Thanks so much!

...Brad

PS. I'm using CFMX 7.x on Linux.

Report · Oct 20, 2006

The tagContext array gives the line numbers of the calling tree.
The first entry is for the offending code.

The line number should be all you need. You can read the file if you really want to display the code.

Report · Oct 23, 2006

Thanks for your reply, but that isn't what I'm after. I'm specifically
after the information in the attached screen shot:

http://brad.melendy.com/cf-error.jpg

I have all the other debug info in my email that comes after the grey box
(all the "classic"
debug info). But I can't figure out how to capture the information in the
above url. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

...Brad

"MikerRoo" <webforumsuser@macromedia.com> wrote in message
news:ehbnvg$p41$1@forums.macromedia.com...
The tagContext array gives the line numbers of the calling tree.
The first entry is for the offending code.

The line number should be all you need. You can read the file if you
really
want to display the code.

Report · Oct 23, 2006

What do you mean, you "have all the other debug info in my email that comes after the grey box"?

Everything in the url you posted is "in the grey box".

Furthermore, all of that information is available in the cferror struct.

What, exactly, SPECIFICALLY, are you missing?

Report · Oct 24, 2006

Sorry for any confusion. I want to include ALL debug info in my email. I
have all the "classic" info included and working but I want the newer "MX"
info which is what is in the grey box. In this screen shot, I inclue the
full debug from an error and have annotaded it with what I have in my email,
and what I don't have in my email (the grey box data).

http://brad.melendy.com/cf-error-full.jpg (might need to save to your hard
drive or expand to full size for proper viewing)

Anyway, I have looked high and low and just can't find the code responsible
for the debug info you see in the grey box. I have read that much of this
information is burried deep inside the error structure, but I don't want to
re-invent the wheel and write a bunch of new code or parse a big XML file.
I want to copy and paste as I have with the classic.cfm template. (That's
why I'm using Coldfusion after all.) It is obviously already formatted
nicely someplace. Thanks again.

...Brad

"MikerRoo" <webforumsuser@macromedia.com> wrote in message
news:ehjbap$qm3$1@forums.macromedia.com...
What do you mean, you "have all the other debug info in my email that comes
after the grey box"?

Everything in the url you posted is "in the grey box".

Furthermore, all of that information is available in the cferror struct.

What, exactly, SPECIFICALLY, are you missing?

Report · Oct 30, 2006

What I've one previously when using CFERROR is to loop over the available structures: -
cferror,variables,request,session,application,server,client,url,form,cgi
and output the contents into an HTML string (using CFSavecontent).

From there I can either email it of (very messy with multiple member support teams) or (this is my preferred option) create an html file (write it to the server) and email out a reference to the file.

i.e.
1. Error occurs
2. Build detailed html page (use javascript "tabs" and cfdump).
3. Write file with unique reference using time, date, server etc.
4. Email support email with cferror detail and the unique reference as a hyperlink.

If you take it further you can categorise errors, write them to a database and produce statistics. Which is very useful if you've got some legacy code and you need to prioritise your errors.

Report · Oct 30, 2006

Definitely keep in mind as well issues with security if you plan to email error messages. If you use any kind of login security such that secure information would appear in any of these scopes or in a query, etc. writing the errors to the disk and then securing them in some way is often the best approach.

Report · Oct 30, 2006

When I've done this I tend to take it a step further and build a small error viewing back end attached to the admin functions.

I also prefer to log the errors in a database since they're easier to analyse than plain text .html files. On top of which if you're running clustered it works a treat.

But yes, you certainly don't want users getting access to that level of data.

And if it's an internal system you can wig the users out by phoning them and saying "Hi xxxx, you just has an error doing yyyy didn't you" etc. Which is kinda amusing...

Report · Oct 31, 2006

quote:

Originally posted by: dave.cozens
When I've done this I tend to take it a step further and build a small error viewing back end attached to the admin functions.

I also prefer to log the errors in a database since they're easier to analyse than plain text .html files. On top of which if you're running clustered it works a treat.

That's pretty much how I did it in CFWebstore, made it part of the admin. I still prefer to write out the files versus using the DB (mainly since it's common for new users to have DB setup problems!) but either certainly works fine. By using .cfm files, it's easy to both put them behind SSL as well as protect them through the CF application.

Brad - don't know where that exact code would come from. But the error scope should have most of the additional information you would need.

Report · Oct 31, 2006

Thanks MaryJo, you would think that the cferror variables would have this
info, but they don't or at least I haven't been able to reproduce the
information I am after using those variables. :-(

"MaryJo" <maryjo@cfwebstore.com> wrote in message
news:ei7tq8$kld$1@forums.macromedia.com...

quote:

Originally posted by: dave.cozens
When I've done this I tend to take it a step further and build a small
error
viewing back end attached to the admin functions.

I also prefer to log the errors in a database since they're easier to
analyse
than plain text .html files. On top of which if you're running clustered it
works a treat.

That's pretty much how I did it in CFWebstore, made it part of the admin. I
still prefer to write out the files versus using the DB (mainly since it's
common for new users to have DB setup problems!) but either certainly works
fine. By using .cfm files, it's easy to both put them behind SSL as well as
protect them through the CF application.

Brad - don't know where that exact code would come from. But the error
scope
should have most of the additional information you would need.

Report · Oct 30, 2006

Thanks Dave,
That works well except I can't seem to find the structure that has the
information I am looking for. All the variables at already nicely formatted
in "classic.cfm" but the newer MX style extra debug info you get isn't in
that template and I'm still looking. Also, I'm trying to keep this simple
and avoid writing a whole "mini-application" to do this. Copying and
pasting the contents of classic.cfm into my <cfmail> tag works so well, but
I just want to find the extra debug output that you get at the top of your
error screen on an MX server like this:

http://brad.melendy.com/cf-error-full.jpg

I'm still hopeful that someone out there knows where the the code that
builds this portion of the debug output exists. Thanks again.

...Brad

"dave.cozens" <webforumsuser@macromedia.com> wrote in message
news:ei4vud$1uj$1@forums.macromedia.com...
What I've one previously when using CFERROR is to loop over the available
structures: -
cferror,variables,request,session,application,server,client,url,form,cgi
and output the contents into an HTML string (using CFSavecontent).

From there I can either email it of (very messy with multiple member
support
teams) or (this is my preferred option) create an html file (write it to the
server) and email out a reference to the file.

i.e.
1. Error occurs
2. Build detailed html page (use javascript "tabs" and cfdump).
3. Write file with unique reference using time, date, server etc.
4. Email support email with cferror detail and the unique reference as a
hyperlink.

If you take it further you can categorise errors, write them to a database
and
produce statistics. Which is very useful if you've got some legacy code and
you
need to prioritise your errors.

Report · Oct 30, 2006

Thanks for the input Mary, I'll keep that in mind.

...Brad

"MaryJo" <maryjo@cfwebstore.com> wrote in message
news:ei50fn$2ib$1@forums.macromedia.com...
Definitely keep in mind as well issues with security if you plan to email
error
messages. If you use any kind of login security such that secure information
would appear in any of these scopes or in a query, etc. writing the errors
to
the disk and then securing them in some way is often the best approach.

Report · Oct 31, 2006

Brad,
I believe what you are looking for is called the robust information. This will not be in the error structre.

The code for this would be in web_inf/exception/detail.cfm.

I use a customized version with very minimal changes from the original version and it works like a charm.

If you would want to use the inbuilt version - you should use it as a custom tag.
<cf_detail error="#error#" >
</cf_detail> .

This would display the robust information and you can even modify the number of surrounding lines you would need.

You would need the logic from detail.cfm,gettemplate.cfm,errorcontext.cfm and a couple of exception XML files in the
/web_inf/exception directory if you would want to build your own.

Hope this helps.

Just Curious -I tried to use classic.cfm debug info in my error log , but was unsuccessful since i disabled debugging in CF server.

How are you doing this? Can you pull out debug info even when debugging is turned off?

Report · Oct 31, 2006

Brad,
I believe what you are looking for is called the robust information. This will not be in the error structre.

The code for this would be in web_inf/exception/detail.cfm.

I use a customized version with very minimal changes from the original version and it works like a charm.

If you would want to use the inbuilt version - you should use it as a custom tag.
<cf_detail error="#error#" >
</cf_detail> .

This would display the robust information and you can even modify the number of surrounding lines you would need.

You would need the logic from detail.cfm,gettemplate.cfm,errorcontext.cfm and a couple of exception XML files in the
/web_inf/exception directory if you would want to build your own.

Hope this helps.

Just Curious -I tried to use classic.cfm debug info in my error log , but was unsuccessful since i disabled debugging in CF server.

How are you doing this? Can you pull out debug info even when debugging is turned off?

Report · Oct 31, 2006

Apologies - didn't mean to spam . I 'm just click happy today.

Report · Oct 31, 2006

Hi Giri,
Thanks for much for your information, I'm going to look into detail.cfm
asap. I am tricking classic.cfm by manually setting the InDebugMode
variable at the top of my template like this:

<cfparam name="InDebugMode" default="True">

It normally does a check for that variable based from the settings in the
CFAdministrator, but I force it to TRUE and it works great.

I'm going to start playing with detail.cfm. Thanks again!

...Brad

"Giri sayee" <webforumsuser@macromedia.com> wrote in message
news:ei8aa1$6pj$1@forums.macromedia.com...
Brad,
I believe what you are looking for is called the robust information. This
will not be in the error structre.

The code for this would be in web_inf/exception/detail.cfm.

I use a customized version with very minimal changes from the original
version
and it works like a charm.

If you would want to use the inbuilt version - you should use it as a
custom
tag.
<cf_detail error="#error#" >
</cf_detail> .

This would display the robust information and you can even modify the
number
of surrounding lines you would need.

You would need the logic from detail.cfm,gettemplate.cfm,errorcontext.cfm
and
a couple of exception XML files in the
/web_inf/exception directory if you would want to build your own.

Hope this helps.

Just Curious -I tried to use classic.cfm debug info in my error log , but
was
unsuccessful since i disabled debugging in CF server.

How are you doing this? Can you pull out debug info even when debugging is
turned off?

Report · Oct 31, 2006

Huh.. It looks like the getDebugger Method of the Debugging factory class is not accessible unless
Debugging is turned on.Maybe i'm missing something that's obvious - but I don't see how setting the variable would generate Debug output.

Can you please explain?

Thanks!

Report · Nov 01, 2006

What i mean is - the server doesn't produce debugging output unless debugging is turned on the server - I don't see how this could work unless you turn debugging on the server and override with cfsetting not to show debug output- Then the server would produce debugging output which could be used for the error emails.

Am i missing something here?

Report · Nov 01, 2006

I'm confused myself. I recently found out that it seems using the code from
classic.cfm in my error emails actually causes the server to behave the
opposite of having debug turned on in the cold fusion administrator.
Depending on the settings, I can get a wonderful html formatted email with
all the debugging info, and other times I get only the debug output on the
screen regardless of if CFERROR is being used. I'm still trying to figure
this out but I believe I'm doing something that isn't supported so whether
it will work correctly is up in the air.

"Giri sayee" <webforumsuser@macromedia.com> wrote in message
news:eiag6g$nrt$1@forums.macromedia.com...
What i mean is - the server doesn't produce debugging output unless
debugging
is turned on the server - I don't see how this could work unless you turn
debugging on the server and override with cfsetting not to show debug
output-
Then the server would produce debugging output which could be used for the
error emails.

Am i missing something here?

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