⚡️ Sentry/Raven SDK Integration For AWS Lambda and Serverless

About

This library simplifies integration of Sentry's node-raven library with AWS Lambda. The only supported platforms are Node.js 6.10 and 8.10. Python and Java support will require dedicated libraries. Pull requests are welcome!

What is Raven and Sentry?

It's a bit confusing, but Raven is the official name of the error reporting SDK that will forward errors, exceptions and messages to the Sentry server. For more details of what Raven and Sentry actually is, refer to the official Sentry documentation: https://docs.sentry.io/.

The serverless-sentry-lib library is not affiliated with either Sentry or Serverless but developed independently and in my spare time.

Benefits

• Easy to use.
• Integrates with Serverless Framework for AWS Lambda (though use of the framework is not required).
• Wraps your Node.js code with Sentry error capturing.
• Forwards any errors returned by your AWS Lambda function to Sentry.
• Warn if your code is about to hit the execution timeout limit.
• Warn if your Lambda function is low on memory.
• Catches and reports unhandled exceptions.
• Serverless, Sentry and as well as this library are all Open Source. Yay! 🎉

Installation

• Install the node-raven module:

  npm install --save raven

• Install this module:

  npm install --save serverless-sentry-lib

• Check out the examples below how to integrate it with your project by updating serverless.yml as well as your Lambda handler code.

We use exclusively Node 6 features to ensure this code can run on AWS Lambda without any transpiling or further processing. We also do not use any 3rd party node module other than raven itself.

This library can be used standalone or as part of the Serverless Sentry Plugin.

Use as Standalone Library

If you don't want to add another plugin to Serverless, you can use this library standalone without additional dependencies (besides raven itself).

You will need to extend your serverless.yml to include additional environment variables. The only required environment variable is SENTRY_DSN to set the DSN url for your reporting. A full list of available environment variables is available below.

service: my-serverless-project
provider:
  # ...
  environment:
    SENTRY_ENVIRONMENT: ${opt:stage, self:provider.stage} # recommended
    SENTRY_DSN: https://xxxx:[email protected]/zzzz # URL provided by Sentry

Use Together With the Serverless Sentry Plugin

The Serverless Sentry Plugin allows configuration of the library through the serverless.yml and will upload your source-maps automatically during deployment. This is the recommended way of using the serverless-sentry-lib library.

Instead of manually setting environment variables the plugin determines and sets them automatically. In the serverless.yml simply load the plugin and set the dsn configuration option as follows:

service: my-serverless-project
provider:
  # ...
plugins:
  serverless-sentry
custom:
  sentry:
    dsn: https://xxxx:[email protected]/zzzz # URL provided by Sentry

You can still manually set environment variables on a per-function level to overwrite the plugin's ones.

Environment Variables

Logging tags can be controlled through the following environment variables. You can set them manually in your serverless.yml or let them be configured automatically using the Serverless Sentry Plugin during deployment.

Environment Variable	Description
SENTRY_DSN	Sentry DSN Url
SENTRY_ENVIRONMENT	Environment (optional, e.g. "dev" or "prod")
SENTRY_RELEASE	Release number of your project (optional)
SENTRY_AUTO_BREADCRUMBS	Automatically create breadcrumbs (see Sentry Raven docs, default to true)
SENTRY_FILTER_LOCAL	Don't report errors from local environments (defaults to true)
SENTRY_CAPTURE_ERRORS	Enable capture Lambda errors (defaults to true)
SENTRY_CAPTURE_UNHANDLED	Enable capture unhandled exceptions (defaults to true)
SENTRY_CAPTURE_MEMORY	Enable monitoring memory usage (defaults to true)
SENTRY_CAPTURE_TIMEOUTS	Enable monitoring execution timeouts (defaults to true)

In addition the library checks for the following optional variables and adds them as custom tags automatically:

Environment Variable	Sentry Tag	Description
SERVERLESS_SERVICE	service_name	Serveless service name
SERVERLESS_STAGE	stage	Serverless stage
SERVERLESS_ALIAS	alias	Serverless alias, see Serverless AWS Alias Plugin
SERVERLESS_REGION	region	Serverless region name

Usage

For maximum flexibility this library is implemented as a wrapper around your original AWS Lambda handler code (your handler.js or similar). The RavenLambdaWrapper adds error and exception handling, and takes care of configuring the Raven client automatically.

The RavenLambdaWrapper is pre-configured to reasonable defaults and doesn't need much setup. Simply pass in your Raven client to the wrapper function as shown below - that's it. Passing in your own Raven client is necessary to ensure that the wrapper uses the same environment as the rest of your code. In the rare circumstances that this isn't desired, you can pass in null instead.

ES2015: Original Lambda Handler Code Before Adding RavenLambdaWrapper:

"use strict";

module.exports.hello = function(event, context, callback) {
  callback(null, { message: 'Go Serverless! Your function executed successfully!', event });
};

ES2015: New Lambda Handler Code With RavenLambdaWrapper For Sentry Reporting

"use strict";

const Raven = require("raven"); // Official `raven` module
const RavenLambdaWrapper = require("serverless-sentry-lib"); // This helper library

module.exports.hello = RavenLambdaWrapper.handler(Raven, (event, context, callback) => {
  // Here follows your original Lambda handler code...
  callback(null, { message: 'Go Serverless! Your function executed successfully!', event });
});

ES2017: Original Lambda Handler Code Before Adding RavenLambdaWrapper:

exports.handler = async (event, context) => {
  return { message: 'Go Serverless! Your function executed successfully!', event };
};

ES2017: New Lambda Handler Code With RavenLambdaWrapper For Sentry Reporting

const Raven = require("raven"); // Official `raven` module
const RavenLambdaWrapper = require("serverless-sentry-lib"); // This helper library

exports.handler = RavenLambdaWrapper.handler(Raven, async (event, context) => {
  // Here follows your original Lambda handler code...
  return { message: 'Go Serverless! Your function executed successfully!', event };
});

Once your Lambda handler code is wrapped in the RavenLambdaWrapper, it will be extended it with automatic error reporting. Whenever your Lambda handler sets an error response, the error is forwarded to Sentry with additional context information.

Setting Custom Configuration Options

As shown above you can use environment variables to control the Sentry integration. In some scenarios in which environment variables are not desired or in which custom logic needs to be executed, you can also pass in configuration options to the RavenLambdaWrapper directly:

• ravenClient - Your Raven client. Don't forget to set this if you send your own custom messages and exceptions to Sentry later in your code.
• autoBreadcrumbs - Automatically create breadcrumbs (see Sentry Raven docs, defaults to true)
• filterLocal - don't report errors from local environments (defaults to true)
• captureErrors - capture Lambda errors (defaults to true)
• captureUnhandledRejections - capture unhandled exceptions (defaults to true)
• captureMemoryWarnings - monitor memory usage (defaults to true)
• captureTimeoutWarnings - monitor execution timeouts (defaults to true)

const RavenLambdaWrapper = require("serverless-sentry-lib");

// Wrap handler for automated error and exception logging
const ravenConfig = {
  captureErrors: false,
  captureUnhandledRejections: true,
  captureMemoryWarnings: true,
  captureTimeoutWarnings: true,
  ravenClient: require("raven") // don't forget!
};
module.exports.handler = RavenLambdaWrapper.handler(ravenConfig, (event, context, callback) => {
  // your Lambda Functions Handler code goes here...
  Raven.captureMessage("Hello from Lambda!", { level: "info "});
});

Accessing the Raven Client for Capturing Custom Messages and Exceptions

If you want to capture a message or exception from anywhere in your code, simply use the Raven client as usual. It is a singleton instance and doesn't need to be configured again:

const Raven = require("raven");
Raven.captureMessage("Hello from Lambda!", { level: "info "});

For backward compatibility with the old Serverless plugin 0.2.x, a global object sls_raven is exposed that can be used to access the current Raven client instead. However, the use of sls_raven is deprecated and discouraged:

if (global.sls_raven) { // DEPRECATED!
  global.sls_raven.captureMessage("Hello from Lambda", { level: "info" });
}

For further documentation on how to use it to capture your own messages refer to docs.getsentry.com.

Capturing Unhandled Exceptions

Typically, if your Lambda code throws an unhandled exception somewhere in the code, the invocation is immediately aborted and the function exits with a "Process exited before completing request". The plugin captures these unhandled exceptions, forwards them to Sentry and returns the exception like any regular error generated by your function.

Local Development

By default the library will only forward errors to Sentry when deployed on AWS Lambda, not during local development. If you want to change this behavior set the filterLocal config option to false.

Detecting Slow Running Code

It's a good practice to specify the function timeout in serverless.yml to be at last twice as large as the expected maximum execution time. If you specify a timeout of 6 seconds (the default), this plugin will warn you if the function runs for 3 or more seconds. That means it's time to either review your code for possible performance improvements or increase the timeout value slightly.

Low Memory Warnings

The plugin will automatically generate a warning if the memory consumption of your Lambda function crosses 75% of the allocated memory limit. The plugin samples the amount of memory used by Node.js every 500 milliseconds (using process.memoryUsage()), independently of any garbage collection. As with all Node.js code, it is important to remember that JavaScript code runs single-threaded and the monitoring function will only be able to sample memory usage if your code is in a wait state, e.g. during database queries or when calling asynchronous functions with a callback.

Only one low memory warning will be generated per function invocation. You might want to increase the memory limit step by step until your code runs without warnings.

Turn Sentry Reporting On/Off

Obviously Sentry reporting is only enabled if you wrap your code using the RavenLambdaWrapper as shown in the examples above. In addition, error reporting is only active if the SENTRY_DSN environment variable is set. This is an easy way to enable or disable reporting as a whole or for specific functions.

In some cases it might be desirable to disable only error reporting itself but keep the advanced features such as timeout and low memory warnings in place. This can be achieved via setting the respective options in the environment variables or the RavenLambdaWrapper during initialization:

const RavenLambdaWrapper = require("serverless-sentry-lib");

// Wrap handler for automated error and exception logging
const ravenConfig = {
  captureErrors: false,             // Don't log error responses from the Lambda ...
  captureUnhandledRejections: true, // but keep unhandled exception logging, ...
  captureMemoryWarnings: true,      // memory warnings ...
  captureTimeoutWarnings: true,     // and timeout warnings enabled.
  ravenClient: require("raven")
};
module.exports.handler = RavenLambdaWrapper.handler(ravenConfig, (event, context, callback) => {
  // your Lambda Functions Handler code goes here...
});

Version History

1.1.2

• Fixed async/await (Promises) handling in Node 8.10. Thanks to shouki-s for the contribution.

1.1.1

• Fixed main entry point in package.json

1.1.0

• ⚠️ Dropped support for Node 4.3. AWS deprecates Node 4.3 starting July 31, 2018.
• Added support for Node 8.10 async/await (Promises) function handlers. Thanks to chechu for his contribution.
• Added test cases.

1.0.1

• Fixed an issue with context.callbackWaitsForEmptyEventLoop not working properly if set outside of RavenLambdaWrapper.handler. The context object is now retained and not cloned anymore which should make things more robust.

1.0.0

• Fixed reporting bugs in local environment despite config telling otherwise.
• Proper parsing of boolean configuration options from environment variables.
• raven-node is a peer dependency now.

1.0.0-rc.2

• Fixed a problem with configuration via environment variables not working
• Initialize (but disable) Sentry when running locally to avoid crashes in user's code.

1.0.0-rc.1

• First official release of this library.

To-Dos

• Simplify integration with the Serverless Sentry Plugin so all configuration options can be set via serverless.yml.
• Write some tests. Seriously.
• Add more test cases. Check the source for some to-dos!
• Ensure all captureException and captureMessage haven been completed before returning from the RavenLambdaWrapper call. This is especially important if the Lambda context is initialized with context.callbackWaitsForEmptyEventLoop = false