---
title: "I am not seeing hoptoad messages. Now I know why."
description:
  "consider_all_request_local determnies if exception should be sent to the
  hoptoad server or not. See this blog to understand more about it."
canonical_url: "https://www.bigbinary.com/blog/I-am-not-seeing-hoptoad-messages"
markdown_url: "https://www.bigbinary.com/blog/I-am-not-seeing-hoptoad-messages.md"
---

# I am not seeing hoptoad messages. Now I know why.

consider_all_request_local determnies if exception should be sent to the hoptoad
server or not. See this blog to understand more about it.

- Author: Neeraj Singh
- Published: April 23, 2010
- Categories: Rails

_Following code has been tested with Rails 2.3.5 ._

Every one knows for sure that hoptoad notifier sends exception messages to
server in _production_ environment. Between 'development' and 'production' there
could be a number of environments. Some of these would have settings closer to
'development' environment and some would have setting closely matching the
settings of 'production' environment.

When you have many environments and when an exception occurs, one is not really
sure if that message is getting logged at hoptoad or not. Here is a run down of
which messages will get logged and why.

### It alls starts with rails

When an exception occurs while rendering a page then `action_controller` catches
the exception. Following logic is evaluated to decide if user should see an
error page with full stack trace or 'we are sorry something went wrong' message.

```ruby
if consider_all_requests_local || local_request?
  rescue_action_locally(exception)
else
  rescue_action_in_public(exception)
end
```

Let's look at first part `consider_all_requests_local` . Open
`~/config/environments/development.rb` and `~/config/environments/production.rb`
.

```ruby
# ~/config/environments/development.rb
config.action_controller.consider_all_requests_local = true

# ~/config/environments/production.rb
config.action_controller.consider_all_requests_local = false
```

As you can see in development mode all requests are local. Be careful with what
you put in your intermediary environments.

If you want to override that value then you can do like this.

```ruby
#~/app/controllers/application_controller.rb
ActionController::Base.consider_all_requests_local = true
```

The second part of the equation was `local_request?` .

Rails has following code for that method.

```ruby
LOCALHOST = '127.0.0.1'.freeze

def local_request?
  request.remote_addr == LOCALHOST && request.remote_ip == LOCALHOST
end
```

As you can see all requests coming from `127.0.0.1` are considered local even if
RAILS_ENV is 'production'. For testing purpose you can override this value like
this.

```ruby

#~/app/controllers/application_controller.rb
def local_request?
 false
end
```

## Hoptoad has access to exception now what

If `consider_all_request_local` is false and if request is not local then
hoptoad will get access to exception thanks to `alias_method_chain`.

```ruby
def self.included(base)
  base.send(:alias_method, :rescue_action_in_public_without_hoptoad, :rescue_action_in_public)
  base.send(:alias_method, :rescue_action_in_public, :rescue_action_in_public_with_hoptoad)
end
```

In `rescue_action_in_public_with_hoptoad` there is a call to `notify_or_ignore`
like this.

```ruby
unless hoptoad_ignore_user_agent?
  HoptoadNotifier.notify_or_ignore(exception, hoptoad_request_data)
end
```

For majority of us there is no special handling for a particular `user_agent` .

```ruby
def notify_or_ignore(exception, opts = {})
  notice = build_notice_for(exception, opts)
  send_notice(notice) unless notice.ignore?
end
```

Hoptoad defines following methods as ignorable by default and you won't get
notifications for following types of exceptions.

```ruby
IGNORE_DEFAULT = ['ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound',
                   'ActionController::RoutingError',
                   'ActionController::InvalidAuthenticityToken',
                   'CGI::Session::CookieStore::TamperedWithCookie',
                   'ActionController::UnknownAction']
```

Next hop is method `send_notice` .

```ruby
def send_notice(notice)
  if configuration.public?
    sender.send_to_hoptoad(notice.to_xml)
  end
end
```

`configuration.public?` is defined like this.

```ruby
@development_environments = %w(development test cucumber)
def public?
  !development_environments.include?(environment_name)
end
```

As you can see if the `Rails.env` is `development` or `test` or `cucumber` the
exception will not be reported to hoptoad server.

## Links

- [Human page](https://www.bigbinary.com/blog/I-am-not-seeing-hoptoad-messages)