Rails Error Dashboard

Gem Version License: MIT Tests

Self-hosted Rails error monitoring — free, forever.

Own your errors. Own your stack. Zero monthly fees.

A fully open-source, self-hosted error dashboard for solo founders, indie hackers, and small teams who want complete control without the SaaS bills.

gem 'rails_error_dashboard'

5-minute setup · Works out-of-the-box · 100% Rails + Postgres · No vendor lock-in

⚠️ BETA SOFTWARE

This Rails Engine is in beta and under active development. While functional and tested (850+ tests passing), the API may change before v1.0.0. Use in production at your own discretion.

Supports: Rails 7.0 - 8.1 | Ruby 3.2+

🎯 Who This Is For

✓ Solo bootstrappers who need professional error tracking without recurring costs

✓ Indie SaaS founders building profitable apps on tight budgets

✓ Small dev teams (2-5 people) who hate SaaS bloat

✓ Privacy-conscious apps that need to keep error data on their own servers

✓ Side projects that might become real businesses

💰 What It Replaces

Before After
Pay $29-99/month for error monitoring $0/month - runs on your existing Rails server
Send sensitive error data to third parties Keep all data on your infrastructure
Fight with SaaS pricing tiers and limits Unlimited errors, unlimited projects
Vendor lock-in with proprietary APIs 100% open source, fully portable
Complex setup with SDKs and external services 5-minute Rails Engine installation

🚀 Why Choose Rails Error Dashboard

"Install once, own it forever"

  • ✅ Zero recurring costs - One-time setup, runs on your existing infrastructure
  • ✅ 5-minute installation - Mount the Rails Engine, run migrations, done
  • ✅ Works immediately - Automatic error capture from Rails controllers, jobs, models
  • ✅ Beautiful UI - Professional dashboard you can show to clients
  • ✅ Full control - Your data stays on your server, modify anything you want
  • ✅ No surprises - Open source MIT license, no hidden fees or limits

Built for developers who:

  • Want professional error monitoring without the SaaS tax
  • Need to debug production issues without paying per error
  • Value data privacy and server ownership
  • Prefer simple, Rails-native solutions

Dashboard Screenshot

✨ Features

🎯 Complete Error Tracking

Automatic error capture from Rails controllers, jobs, and middleware. Frontend & mobile support for React, React Native, Vue, Angular, Flutter. Platform detection (iOS/Android/Web/API), user context tracking, full stack traces.

📊 Beautiful Dashboard

Modern Bootstrap 5 UI with dark/light mode, responsive design, real-time statistics, search and filtering, fast pagination.

📈 Analytics & Insights

7-day trend charts, severity breakdown, spike detection, platform comparison, resolution rate tracking, user impact analysis.

🚨 Multi-Channel Alerting

Slack, Email, Discord, PagerDuty, and custom webhooks. Beautifully formatted messages with rich context, direct links to errors, customizable per channel.

⚡ Performance & Scalability

Async error logging, backtrace limiting (70-90% storage reduction), error sampling, database optimization with composite indexes, PostgreSQL GIN indexes.

🔌 Plugin System

Extensible architecture with event hooks. Built-in examples for Jira, metrics tracking, audit logging. Easy to create custom integrations.

🔒 Security & Privacy

HTTP Basic Auth, environment-based settings, optional separate database for isolation.

📚 View complete feature list →

📦 Quick Start

1. Add to Gemfile

gem 'rails_error_dashboard'

2. Install with Interactive Setup

bundle install
rails generate rails_error_dashboard:install
rails db:migrate

The installer will guide you through optional feature selection:

  • Notifications (Slack, Email, Discord, PagerDuty, Webhooks)
  • Performance (Async Logging, Error Sampling, Separate Database)
  • Advanced Analytics (8 powerful features including baseline alerts, fuzzy matching, platform comparison)

All features are opt-in - choose what you need during installation, or enable/disable them later in the initializer.

This will:

  • Create config/initializers/rails_error_dashboard.rb with your selected features
  • Copy database migrations
  • Mount the engine at /error_dashboard

3. Visit your dashboard

Start your server and visit:

http://localhost:3000/error_dashboard

Default credentials:

  • Username: gandalf
  • Password: youshallnotpass

⚠️ Change these before production! Edit config/initializers/rails_error_dashboard.rb

4. Test it out

Trigger a test error to see it in action:

# In Rails console or any controller
raise "Test error from Rails Error Dashboard!"

The error will appear instantly in your dashboard with full context, backtrace, and platform information.

📘 Full installation guide →

⚙️ Configuration

Opt-in Feature System

Rails Error Dashboard uses an opt-in architecture - core features (error capture, dashboard UI, analytics) are always enabled, while everything else is disabled by default.

Tier 1 Features (Always ON):

  • ✅ Error capture (controllers, jobs, middleware)
  • ✅ Dashboard UI with search and filtering
  • ✅ Real-time updates
  • ✅ Analytics and trend charts

Optional Features (Choose During Install):

  • 📧 Multi-channel notifications (Slack, Email, Discord, PagerDuty, Webhooks)
  • ⚡ Performance optimizations (Async logging, Error sampling)
  • 📊 Advanced analytics (Baseline alerts, Fuzzy matching, Platform comparison, and more)

Basic Configuration

Edit config/initializers/rails_error_dashboard.rb:

RailsErrorDashboard.configure do |config|
  # ============================================================================
  # AUTHENTICATION (Always Required)
  # ============================================================================
  config.dashboard_username = ENV.fetch('ERROR_DASHBOARD_USER', 'gandalf')
  config.dashboard_password = ENV.fetch('ERROR_DASHBOARD_PASSWORD', 'youshallnotpass')

  # ============================================================================
  # OPTIONAL FEATURES (Enable as needed)
  # ============================================================================

  # Slack notifications (if enabled during install)
  config.enable_slack_notifications = true
  config.slack_webhook_url = ENV['SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL']

  # Email notifications (if enabled during install)
  config.enable_email_notifications = true
  config.notification_email_recipients = ["dev@yourapp.com"]
  config.notification_email_from = "errors@yourapp.com"

  # Async logging for better performance (if enabled during install)
  config.async_logging = true
  config.async_adapter = :sidekiq  # or :solid_queue, :async

  # Advanced analytics features (if enabled during install)
  config.enable_baseline_alerts = true
  config.enable_similar_errors = true
  config.enable_platform_comparison = true
end

All features can be toggled on/off at any time by editing the initializer.

Environment Variables

# .env
ERROR_DASHBOARD_USER=your_username
ERROR_DASHBOARD_PASSWORD=your_secure_password
SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL=https://hooks.slack.com/services/YOUR/WEBHOOK/URL
DASHBOARD_BASE_URL=https://yourapp.com

📖 Complete configuration guide →

🚀 Usage

Automatic Error Tracking

Rails Error Dashboard automatically tracks errors from:

  • Controllers (via Rails error reporting)
  • Background jobs (ActiveJob, Sidekiq)
  • Rack middleware (catches everything else)

No additional code needed! Just install and it works.

Manual Error Logging

For frontend/mobile apps or custom error logging:

# From your Rails API
RailsErrorDashboard::Commands::LogError.call(
  error_type: "TypeError",
  message: "Cannot read property 'name' of null",
  backtrace: ["App.js:42", "index.js:12"],
  platform: "iOS",
  app_version: "2.1.0",
  user_id: current_user.id,
  context: {
    component: "ProfileScreen",
    device_model: "iPhone 14 Pro"
  }
)

Frontend Integration

// React Native example
try {
  // Your code
} catch (error) {
  fetch('https://yourapp.com/api/errors', {
    method: 'POST',
    headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' },
    body: JSON.stringify({
      error_type: error.name,
      message: error.message,
      backtrace: error.stack.split('\n'),
      platform: Platform.OS, // 'ios' or 'android'
      app_version: VERSION
    })
  });
}

📱 Mobile app integration guide →

🔔 Notifications

Set up multi-channel notifications in minutes:

Slack

config.enable_slack_notifications = true
config.slack_webhook_url = ENV['SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL']

Discord

config.enable_discord_notifications = true
config.discord_webhook_url = ENV['DISCORD_WEBHOOK_URL']

PagerDuty (Critical Errors Only)

config.enable_pagerduty_notifications = true
config.pagerduty_integration_key = ENV['PAGERDUTY_INTEGRATION_KEY']

Custom Webhooks

config.enable_webhook_notifications = true
config.webhook_urls = ['https://yourapp.com/hooks/errors']

🔕 Notification setup guide →

📚 Documentation

Getting Started

Features

Advanced

Development

📖 View all documentation →

🏗️ Architecture

Built with Service Objects + CQRS Principles:

  • Commands: LogError, ResolveError, BatchOperations (write operations)
  • Queries: ErrorsList, DashboardStats, Analytics (read operations)
  • Value Objects: ErrorContext (immutable data)
  • Services: PlatformDetector, SimilarityCalculator (business logic)
  • Plugins: Event-driven extensibility

Clean, maintainable, testable architecture you can understand and modify.

🤝 Contributing

We welcome contributions! Here's how to get started:

  1. Fork the repository
  2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
  3. Write tests for your changes
  4. Ensure all tests pass (bundle exec rspec)
  5. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add amazing feature')
  6. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
  7. Open a Pull Request

Development Setup

git clone https://github.com/AnjanJ/rails_error_dashboard.git
cd rails_error_dashboard
bundle install

# Run tests
bundle exec rspec

# Run tests for all Rails versions
bundle exec appraisal rspec

🔧 Development guide →

📝 License

Rails Error Dashboard is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.

🙏 Acknowledgments

💬 Support

Made with ❤️ by Anjan for the Rails community

One Gem to rule them all, One Gem to find them, One Gem to bring them all, and in the dashboard bind them. 🧙‍♂️