Filtering
When you add Sentry to your app, you get a lot of valuable information about errors and performance. And lots of information is good -- as long as it's the right information, at a reasonable volume.
The Sentry SDKs have several configuration options to help you filter out events.
We also offer Inbound Filters to filter events in sentry.io. We recommend filtering at the client level though, because it removes the overhead of sending events you don't actually want. Learn more about the fields available in an event.
Filtering Error Events
Configure your SDK to filter error events by using the before_send
callback method and configuring, enabling, or disabling integrations.
Using before_send
All Sentry SDKs support the before_send
callback method. Because it's called immediately before the event is sent to the server, this is your last chance to decide not to send data or to edit it. before_send
receives the event object as a parameter, which you can use to either modify the event’s data or drop it completely by returning null
, based on custom logic and the data available on the event.
In the Laravel config, a closure can be used to modify the event or return a completely new one. If you return null
, the event will be discarded.
config/sentry.php
'before_send' => function (\Sentry\Event $event): ?\Sentry\Event {
return $event;
},
Learn more in Closures and Config Caching.
Note also that breadcrumbs can be filtered, as discussed in our Breadcrumbs documentation.
Event Hints
The before_send
callback is passed both the event
and a second argument, hint
, that holds one or more hints.
Typically a hint
holds the original exception so that additional data can be extracted or grouping is affected. In this example, the
config/sentry.php
'before_send' => function (\Sentry\Event $event, ?\Sentry\EventHint $hint): ?\Sentry\Event {
// Ignore the event if the original exception is an instance of MyException
if ($hint !== null && $hint->exception instanceof MyException) {
return null;
}
return $event;
},
Learn more in Closures and Config Caching.
When the SDK creates an event or breadcrumb for transmission, that transmission is typically created from some sort of source object. For instance, an error event is typically created from a log record or exception instance. For better customization, SDKs send these objects to certain callbacks (before_send
, before_breadcrumb
or the event processor system in the SDK).
Using Hints
Hints are available in two places:
before_send
/before_breadcrumb
eventProcessors
Event and breadcrumb hints
are objects containing various information used to put together an event or a breadcrumb. Typically hints
hold the original exception so that additional data can be extracted or grouping can be affected.
For events, hints contain properties such as event_id
, originalException
, syntheticException
(used internally to generate cleaner stack trace), and any other arbitrary data
that you attach.
For breadcrumbs, the use of hints
is implementation dependent. For XHR requests, the hint contains the xhr object itself; for user interactions the hint contains the DOM element and event name and so forth.
In this example, the
config/sentry.php
'before_send' => function (\Sentry\Event $event, ?\Sentry\EventHint $hint): ?\Sentry\Event {
if ($hint !== null && $hint->exception !== null && str_contains($hint->exception->getMessage(), 'database unavailable')) {
$event->setFingerprint(['database-unavailable']);
}
return $event;
},
Learn more in Closures and Config Caching.
Hints for Events
originalException
- The original exception that caused the Sentry SDK to create the event. This is useful for changing how the Sentry SDK groups events or to extract additional information.
syntheticException
- When a string or a non-error object is raised, Sentry creates a synthetic exception so you can get a basic stack trace. This exception is stored here for further data extraction.
Hints for Breadcrumbs
event
- For breadcrumbs created from browser events, the Sentry SDK often supplies the event to the breadcrumb as a hint. This can be used to extract data from the target DOM element into a breadcrumb, for example.
level
/input
- For breadcrumbs created from console log interceptions. This holds the original console log level and the original input data to the log function.
response
/input
- For breadcrumbs created from HTTP requests. This holds the response object (from the fetch API) and the input parameters to the fetch function.
request
/response
/event
- For breadcrumbs created from HTTP requests. This holds the request and response object (from the node HTTP API) as well as the node event (
response
orerror
).
xhr
- For breadcrumbs created from HTTP requests made using the legacy
XMLHttpRequest
API. This holds the originalxhr
object.
Using ignore_exceptions
You can use the ignore_exceptions
option to filter out errors that match a type or subtype.
config/sentry.php
'ignore_exceptions' => [
UnauthenticatedException::class,
],
Filtering Transaction Events
To prevent certain transactions from being reported to Sentry, use the traces_sampler
or before_send_transaction
configuration option, which allows you to provide a function to evaluate the current transaction and drop it if it's not one you want.
Using traces_sampler
Note: The traces_sampler
and traces_sample_rate
config options are mutually exclusive. If you define a traces_sampler
to filter out certain transactions, you must also handle the case of non-filtered transactions by returning the rate at which you'd like them sampled.
In its simplest form, used just for filtering the transaction, it looks like this:
config/sentry.php
'traces_sampler' => function (\Sentry\Tracing\SamplingContext $context): float {
if ($context->getParentSampled()) {
// If the parent transaction (for example a JavaScript front-end)
// is sampled, also sample the current transaction
return 1.0;
}
if (some_condition()) {
// Drop this transaction, by setting its sample rate to 0
return 0;
}
// Default sample rate for all other transactions (replaces `traces_sample_rate`)
return 0.25;
},
Learn more in Closures and Config Caching.
It also allows you to sample different transactions at different rates.
If the transaction currently being processed has a parent transaction (from an upstream service calling this service), the parent (upstream) sampling decision will always be included in the sampling context data, so that your traces_sampler
can choose whether and when to inherit that decision. In most cases, inheritance is the right choice, to avoid breaking distributed traces. A broken trace will not include all your services. See Inheriting the parent sampling decision to learn more.
Learn more about configuring the sample rate.
Using before_send_transaction
In the Laravel config, a closure can be used to modify the event or return a completely new one. If you return null
, the event will be discarded.
config/sentry.php
'before_send_transaction' => function (\Sentry\Event $transaction): ?\Sentry\Event {
return $transaction;
},
Learn more in Closures and Config Caching.
Using ignore_transactions
You can use the ignore_transactions
option to filter out transactions that match a certain string.
config/sentry.php
'ignore_transactions' => [
'GET /health',
],
Our documentation is open source and available on GitHub. Your contributions are welcome, whether fixing a typo (drat!) to suggesting an update ("yeah, this would be better").
- Package:
- composer:sentry/sentry-laravel
- Version:
- 4.1.0
- Repository:
- https://github.com/getsentry/sentry-laravel