Error Logging

[CodingYoshi]

I was wondering what you do when you are logging errors and providing error messages during dev, qa, uat and then production. For example, for qa I provide a message to include a guid with their ticket. I provide them the guid. I then use this guid to look up the error message in the log and see what the issue was. The error messages will change once it goes to production as it will not make sense to ask users to include the guid with their ticket. You simply tell them something went wrong or if they can fix it, tell them what they can do. The question is: What is the best practice to use to change error reporting based on qa, uat and production phases? Here are some ideas I have: 1. I can read from config file for the phase and provide errors accordingly 2. I can have a preprocessor directive defined for each phase

CodingYoshi Artificial Intelligence is no match for Human Stupidity.

[Pete OHanlon]

I'm not keen on this idea because you aren't testing like for like code (and yes, testing exception handling is testing the code). In other words, each environment is required to behave differently, which means that you cannot be 100% confident that your code will behave correctly as you haven't tested it in the previous environment.

*pre-emptive celebratory nipple tassle jiggle* - Sean Ewington

"Mind bleach! Send me mind bleach!" - Nagy Vilmos

CodeStash - Online Snippet Management | My blog | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier

[CodingYoshi]

Point taken! I was looking for more ideas from everyone else and assumed my idea was not the best approach. Can you provide some ideas about how you handle such? I am using Log4Net if that matters. I am pretty sure I am not the first to come across this.

CodingYoshi Artificial Intelligence is no match for Human Stupidity.

[Pete OHanlon]

It really depends on what you are hooking into. If you are logging your errors into a database, then you could have a configuration in that database to identify the level of detail to provide, or you could have the actual error message in there. Supposing that the Guid that you display in QA is the identity of the logged error, then your message could be "There was an error logged with id {0}". Now, if you provide the Guid into this using string.Format and there's no {0} written there then the Guid wouldn't be written out in the error message - satisfying that criteria of not displaying unecessary info to the end user.

*pre-emptive celebratory nipple tassle jiggle* - Sean Ewington

"Mind bleach! Send me mind bleach!" - Nagy Vilmos

CodeStash - Online Snippet Management | My blog | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier

[Lost User]

CodingYoshi wrote:

1. I can read from config file for the phase and provide errors accordingly
2. I can have a preprocessor directive defined for each phase

I'd recommend a unified way of phoning home; have every unexpected exception be automatically logged in the bugtracker, and have the bugtracker look up the actual phase of development. You could add in a conditional compile; adding some complexity that does not add much value to the end-product.

Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: if you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]

[Abhinav S]

You could think about using log4net - this will handle a lot of the logging framework for you. If you want you can turn off debugging logs in the production environment.

Windows Phone Apps - XKCD | Calvin | SMBC | Dilbert | Speed Dial

[CodingYoshi]

I am using Log4net as I have mentioned. How can I turn off debugging log? Please note one of the things I am trying to do is providing different error messages to users based on whether the product is in qa or production. In qa the user will be qa. In production it will be, obviously, a regular user.

CodingYoshi Artificial Intelligence is no match for Human Stupidity.

[Pete OHanlon]

Store your error messages in a database, and read them from there. I wouldn't recommend using resource files for this because it would mean that you have to do a different deploy between the environments.

*pre-emptive celebratory nipple tassle jiggle* - Sean Ewington

"Mind bleach! Send me mind bleach!" - Nagy Vilmos

CodeStash - Online Snippet Management | My blog | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier