Logging javascript errors within Google Analytics

Question

I'm trying to get information on JavaScript errors that are occurring within my web application and logging these using events within Google Analytics. I'm doing this as follows:

$(document).ready(function() {
    var sendAnalyticsEvent = function(category, action, label) {
        if (window.ga) {
            window.ga('send', 'event', category, action, label);
        }
    };

    window.onerror = function(error) {
        try {
            sendAnalyticsEvent('JavaScript Error', error.message, error.filename + ':  ' + error.lineno);
        } catch(e) {
        }
    };

    $(document).ajaxError(function(e, request, settings) {
        try {
            sendAnalyticsEvent('Ajax Error', settings.url, e.result);
        } catch(e) {
        }
    });
});

This is successfully firing the events to Analytics for example:

However when I click into 'JavaScript Error' it doesn't give me any other information, for example the error message that should have been sent with the code above.

Any ideas why this isn't sending the error message along with the error?

EDIT

It turns out I was declaring the window.onerror function incorrectly. The following works correctly:

window.onerror = function (message, source, lineno, colno, error) {
    try {
        sendAnalyticsEvent('js error', message, source + ':  ' + lineno);
    } catch(e) {
    }
};

Philip Walton · Accepted Answer · 2016-02-25 16:12:21Z

4

You're sending the error message as the Event Label dimensions, but that report is looking at the Event Category dimension. If you click on Event Label, you should see it.

That being said, why not use exception tracking instead of event tracking to measure this? Exception tracking was built exactly for this use case.

answered Feb 25, 2016 at 16:12

Philip Walton

30.5k16 gold badges63 silver badges85 bronze badges

This is the problem, when I click into it the error doesn't appear, it's not being logged.
– andrewm
Commented Feb 29, 2016 at 9:25
What have you tried to debug this? How do you know you're actually sending the correct data? Without more information it's impossible for anyone here to help. Based of what you've shown in your question, my advice should work.
– Philip Walton
Commented Feb 29, 2016 at 16:17
I've managed to get this working, I wasn't declaring the window.onerror method correctly, I'll edit this question with my solution, however I'll credit you with the correct answer as the logging itself should be done by analytics exception tracking
– andrewm
Commented Mar 1, 2016 at 10:52

Add a comment |

mrded · Accepted Answer · 2016-08-01 14:26:18Z

In you case the problem is with declaring window.onerror() inside $(document).ready(), it will only catch errors after jQuery initialisation. You need to declare it as early as possible.

Add following into <head>:

<script>
(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
    (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
  m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)
})(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','_watchdog');

_watchdog('create', 'UA-xxxxxxx-x', 'auto');

window.onerror = function(msg) {
  _watchdog('send', 'exception', { 'exDescription': msg });

  _watchdog('send', 'event', {
    eventCategory: 'javascript',
    eventAction: 'error',
    eventLabel: msg,
    transport: 'beacon'
  });
}
</script>

After that you will start receiving events with 'error' type under 'Javascript' category.

Unfortunately, in Event Tracking, your error messages will be limited by 500 Bytes, so you will not be able to understand a problem properly, however you will know that something is going wrong :)

For mo detailed errors use Exception Tracking

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