Skip to Content Skip to Search

class ActiveSupport::BacktraceCleaner

Backtrace Cleaner

Backtraces often include many lines that are not relevant for the context under review. This makes it hard to find the signal amongst the backtrace noise, and adds debugging time. With a BacktraceCleaner, filters and silencers are used to remove the noisy lines, so that only the most relevant lines remain.

Filters are used to modify lines of data, while silencers are used to remove lines entirely. The typical filter use case is to remove lengthy path information from the start of each line, and view file paths relevant to the app directory instead of the file system root. The typical silencer use case is to exclude the output of a noisy library from the backtrace, so that you can focus on the rest.

bc = ActiveSupport::BacktraceCleaner.new
root = "#{Rails.root}/"
bc.add_filter   { |line| line.start_with?(root) ? line.from(root.size) : line } # strip the Rails.root prefix
bc.add_silencer { |line| /puma|rubygems/.match?(line) } # skip any lines from puma or rubygems
bc.clean(exception.backtrace) # perform the cleanup

To reconfigure an existing BacktraceCleaner (like the default one in Rails) and show as much data as possible, you can always call BacktraceCleaner#remove_silencers!, which will restore the backtrace to a pristine state. If you need to reconfigure an existing BacktraceCleaner so that it does not filter or modify the paths of any lines of the backtrace, you can call BacktraceCleaner#remove_filters! These two methods will give you a completely untouched backtrace.

Inspired by the Quiet Backtrace gem by thoughtbot.

Constants

FORMATTED_GEMS_PATTERN = /\A[^\/]+ \([\w.]+\) /
 

Public class methods

new()

Permalink
Source code GitHub 
# File activesupport/lib/active_support/backtrace_cleaner.rb, line 35
def initialize
  @filters, @silencers = [], []
  add_gem_filter
  add_gem_silencer
  add_stdlib_silencer
end

Public instance methods

add_filter(&block)

Permalink

Adds a filter from the block provided. Each line in the backtrace will be mapped against this filter.

# Will turn "/my/rails/root/app/models/person.rb" into "app/models/person.rb"
root = "#{Rails.root}/"
backtrace_cleaner.add_filter { |line| line.start_with?(root) ? line.from(root.size) : line }
Source code GitHub 
# File activesupport/lib/active_support/backtrace_cleaner.rb, line 82
def add_filter(&block)
  @filters << block
end

add_silencer(&block)

Permalink

Adds a silencer from the block provided. If the silencer returns true for a given line, it will be excluded from the clean backtrace.

# Will reject all lines that include the word "puma", like "/gems/puma/server.rb" or "/app/my_puma_server/rb"
backtrace_cleaner.add_silencer { |line| /puma/.match?(line) }
Source code GitHub 
# File activesupport/lib/active_support/backtrace_cleaner.rb, line 91
def add_silencer(&block)
  @silencers << block
end

clean(backtrace, kind = :silent)

Permalink

Also aliased as: filter.

Returns the backtrace after all filters and silencers have been run against it. Filters run first, then silencers.

Source code GitHub 
# File activesupport/lib/active_support/backtrace_cleaner.rb, line 44
def clean(backtrace, kind = :silent)
  filtered = filter_backtrace(backtrace)

  case kind
  when :silent
    silence(filtered)
  when :noise
    noise(filtered)
  else
    filtered
  end
end

clean_frame(frame, kind = :silent)

Permalink

Returns the frame with all filters applied. returns nil if the frame was silenced.

Source code GitHub 
# File activesupport/lib/active_support/backtrace_cleaner.rb, line 60
def clean_frame(frame, kind = :silent)
  frame = frame.to_s
  @filters.each do |f|
    frame = f.call(frame.to_s)
  end

  case kind
  when :silent
    frame unless @silencers.any? { |s| s.call(frame) }
  when :noise
    frame if @silencers.any? { |s| s.call(frame) }
  else
    frame
  end
end

filter(backtrace, kind = :silent)

Permalink

Alias for: clean.

remove_filters!()

Permalink

Removes all filters, but leaves in the silencers. Useful if you suddenly need to see entire filepaths in the backtrace that you had already filtered out.

Source code GitHub 
# File activesupport/lib/active_support/backtrace_cleaner.rb, line 105
def remove_filters!
  @filters = []
end

remove_silencers!()

Permalink

Removes all silencers, but leaves in the filters. Useful if your context of debugging suddenly expands as you suspect a bug in one of the libraries you use.

Source code GitHub 
# File activesupport/lib/active_support/backtrace_cleaner.rb, line 98
def remove_silencers!
  @silencers = []
end

Definition files