Identify users in Sentry Backend

[FelixMalfait]

Scope & Context

When we capture exceptions, we are sending them to our Exception Handler. See ExceptionHandlerService / captureException These errors are sent to Sentry in production. They are working fine but we would like to know which user (and on which workspace) the error has been triggered. We would like to add user_id, workspaceMember_id, workspace_id to this payload when they are available (obviously if an error happens while the user is logged out, we cannot send them) This has already been done on the frontend.

Technical inputs

See: https://docs.sentry.io/platforms/node/enriching-events/identify-user/ On the BE, the user information should be computed based on JWT token. Exceptions are handled here: global-exception-handler.util.ts. I am not sure about the best way to properly make the user available in this file, we might have to rather pass it as a parameter of globalExceptionHandler when we call it from GraphQLConfigService for example. See all the services calling globalExceptionHandler, we should make sure the user is passed in all cases.

[mohamedamara1]

Links I found related to this :

• https://github.com/getsentry/sentry-javascript/issues/4137
• https://forum.sentry.io/t/correct-way-to-setuser-in-node-sdk/14355

Also this :

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/71777861/nestjs-get-the-execution-context-within-the-exception-filter

[charlesBochet]

This has been implemented, closing this issue

[sbriceland]

@charlesBochet If this has been implemented, then there still is a bug. As @FelixMalfait mentioned, the documentation is misleading.

From Scopes Documentation:

For instance, a web server might handle multiple requests at the same time, and each request may have different scope data to apply to its events.

The isolation scope is used to isolate events from each other. For example, each request in a web server might get its own isolation scope, so that events from one request don't interfere with events from another request. In most cases, you'll want to put data that should be applied to your events on the isolation scope - which is also why all Sentry.setXXX methods, like Sentry.setTag(), will write data onto the currently active isolation scope. A classic example for data that belongs on the isolation scope is a user - each request may have a different user, so you want to make sure that the user is set on the isolation scope

... The documentation matches exactly the behavior needed. However, it simply does not work.

• make an authenticated request, lookup user details, call setUser
• make an unauthenticated request, do not call to setUser for this request (scope) because we don't have one, and throw an error manually

Problems

• The manually thrown error will report the User from the previous authenticated request.
• The same problem exists for spans.
• This is intentionally simple, but we've seen many errors report the wrong user

This example using Express should demonstrate...

import * as Sentry from '@sentry/node';
import bodyParser from 'body-parser';
import express, { Application, NextFunction, Request, Response, Router } from 'express';

Sentry.init({
    dsn: undefined, // not needed for local debugging to reveal the issue
    beforeSend: (event, hint, ...args) => {
        const { type, contexts, exception, extra, tags, message, user, request } = event;
        console.dir(
            {
                whoami: 'sentry:beforeSend',
                event: { type, contexts, exception, extra, tags, message, user, request },
                hint,
                args
            },
            { depth: null }
        );
        return event;
    },
    skipOpenTelemetrySetup: true
});

const app: Application = express();

const router = Router();

router.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: true, limit: '500kb' }));
router.use(bodyParser.json({ limit: '500kb' }));

const Users: { id: string; email: string; name: string }[] = [
    { id: '1', email: '[email protected]', name: 'foo example' },
    { id: '2', email: '[email protected]', name: 'foo example2' },
    { id: '3', email: '[email protected]', name: 'foo example3' },
    { id: '4', email: '[email protected]', name: 'foo example4' }
];

router.use('/users', function (req, res, next) {
    try {
        const authUser = Users.find((u) => u.id === req.headers['authorization']);
        if (authUser) {
            Sentry.setTag('Authenticated', true);
            Sentry.setUser(authUser);
            res.json(Users);
        } else {
            throw new Error('Authentication Error');
        }
    } catch (err) {
        next(err);
    }
});

app.use('/api', router);

app.use(function (err: Error, req: Request, res: Response, next: NextFunction) {
    const { method, originalUrl, params, query, body } = req;
    const { statusCode, locals } = res;

    Sentry.withScope((scope) => {
        scope.setExtras({
            request: { method, originalUrl, params, query, body },
            response: { statusCode, locals }
        });
        const eventId = Sentry.captureException(err);
        (res as { sentry?: string }).sentry = eventId;
    });

    next(err);
});

// Or just use this, which is identical to above, without `extras`
// Sentry.setupExpressErrorHandler(app);

const PORT = process.env.PORT || 3000
app.listen(PORT, () => {
    console.log(`API running @ http://localhost:${PORT}`);
});

Repro Steps:

Send the following requests:

# make an "authenticated" request
curl --header "authorization: 1" --header "content-type: application/json" http://localhost:3000/api/users

# subsequently make an unauthenticated request
curl --header "authorization: 798798798798" --header "content-type: application/json" http://localhost:3000/api/users

[sbriceland]

oh dear .. sorry folks. I thought i was over on the Sentry issue page. Nothing to see here. I'll move my issue to them

[FelixMalfait]

@sbriceland no worries! I guess our repo is now ranking well on Google 😅