Default adapter doesn't raise on error?

[thbar]

While writing a test for an app, I realised that:

stub_request(:post, "https://ssl.google-analytics.com/collect").to_return(status: 500, body: "", headers: {})

would not raise an error.

What would be the best strategy to get an error (to e.g. retry in sidekiq) in case the POST failed? (maybe using a custom adapter?)

[thbar]

Ok I see that writing an adapter is quite easy, so I'll do that.

I wonder if you'd welcome a doc patch to warn that track! won't raise by default?

[tpitale]

Yeah, staccato is a "fire-and-forget" style by default. This mirrors tools that interface with statsd, etc. We didn't want to interrupt an application if google is down, or there is a network issue.

Always happy to take a look at PRs that clarify, thank you!

I'd also be open to making something like this configurable.

[tpitale]

Strange though, in reviewing the code, I'm not seeing anywhere that we catch errors. I assume they would just bubble up from the adapter.

What was the adapter you were using? The default net/http? I think that may just return a response with a 500, not raise an error. You might be able to check that response and raise yourself.

[thbar]

Fire-and-forget is good usually for that indeed! Here I'm working in a background job, so I'll prefer to retry later.

Indeed I'm using the default net/http adapter, which won't raise for a 500 (but will for plenty of other cases https://stackoverflow.com/a/5370726/20302).

I'll either handle the response, or will write a quick custom adapter.

Thanks for the quick reply!

[tpitale]

@thbar In further thinking about this … I would love to add an adapter for like actionjob or something. I think it could be pretty plug-and-play. Are you using Rails and/or ActiveJob?

[thbar]

@tpitale it's a Rails app. In my case though, I prefer to use Sidekiq than ActiveJob!

FWIW, here is what I came up with, because post_form does not return the HTTP response:

require 'httparty'

module Custom
  module Staccato
    class HTTPartyAdapter
      attr_reader :uri

      def initialize(uri)
        @uri = uri
      end

      def post(data)
        HTTParty.post(uri, body: data)
      end
    end
  end
end

Then later in my Sidekiq job, I do:

class GoogleAnalyticsWorker
  include Sidekiq::Worker
  sidekiq_options retry: false

  def perform(options)
    hit = Staccato::Event.new(build_tracker,
      action: options.fetch('action'),
      category: options.fetch('category'),
      document_hostname: options.fetch('document_hostname'),
      data_source: options.fetch('data_source')
    )
    hit.add_custom_dimension(1, default_value(options.fetch('foobar_1')))
    hit.add_custom_dimension(2, default_value(options.fetch('foobar_2')))
    hit.add_custom_dimension(3, default_value(options.fetch('foobar_3')))

    response = hit.track!
    return if response.success?
    raise "Failed to send event to Google Analytics (HTTP #{response.code})"
  end

  # record with a blank dimension value won't be counted into general reports
  def default_value(value)
    value.blank? ? 'not provided' : value
  end

  def build_tracker
    Staccato.tracker(ENV.fetch('GA_PROPERTY_ID'), nil, ssl: true) do |c|
      c.adapter = Custom::Staccato::HTTPartyAdapter.new(Staccato.ga_collection_uri(true))
    end
  end
end

This makes sure that whenever the GA response is not in the 2XX range, I'll get an exception.

[tpitale]

Interesting, I have been away from the ruby/rails world too long. It seems ActiveJob isn't as popular as just using the background job of your choice. Unnecessary abstraction.