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John Gallagher's presentation at the Ruby Warsaw Community Conference took place on July 19, 2024, in Warsaw.

Fix Production Bugs Quickly - The Power of Structured Logging in Rails

Rails apps can be a black box. Have you ever tried to fix a bug where you just can’t understand what’s going on? This talk will give you practical steps to improve the observability of your Rails app, taking the time to understand and fix defects from hours or days to minutes. Rails 8 will bring an exciting new feature: built-in structured logging. This talk will delve into the transformative impact of structured logging on fixing bugs and saving engineers time. Structured logging, as a cornerstone of observability, offers a powerful way to handle logs compared to traditional text-based logs. This session will guide you through the nuances of structured logging in Rails, demonstrating how it can be used to gain better insights into your application’s behavior. This talk will be a practical, technical deep dive into how to make structured logging work with an existing Rails app.
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In the presentation "Fix Production Bugs Quickly - The Power of Structured Logging in Rails," John Gallagher discusses enhancing observability in Rails applications to expedite the resolution of production bugs. The talk highlights the challenges engineers face when troubleshooting issues, driven by an anecdote of a critical production incident involving password reset emails at his company, Bigger Pockets. Gallagher underscores the importance of structured logging in Rails 8, which will significantly improve logging capabilities compared to traditional text-based logs. He outlines five critical steps for implementing structured logging:

- **Identify the Problem**: Defining what data needs to be collected to address specific questions, such as identifying delays in job processing.
- **Data Collection Criteria**: Gallagher emphasizes the importance of determining the type of data (e.g., job duration, event types), stressing that visibility into application performance is crucial.
- **Implementing Structured Logging**: He compares traditional logging to structured logging, advocating for structured formats that facilitate better searching and filtering.
- **Choosing a Logging Library**: Gallagher recommends using Semantic Logger due to its robust features and compatibility with Rails, providing logged data in a structured JSON format.
- **Sending Data to Monitoring Tools**: He details the process of configuring logs to integrate with observability tools like Rollbar and Honeybadger, illustrating how to utilize logs for proactive error tracking.

Throughout the talk, Gallagher reflects on the emotional aspects of engineering—frustration, embarrassment, and self-doubt—that arise from unresolved bugs and system outages. He encourages developers to view their struggles with observability as common challenges rather than personal failures. Conclusively, the session advocates not only for technical solutions to improve logging but also for a mindset shift towards proactive observability that can prevent future issues before they impact users.

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