Is sentry-cocoa safe to use in App Extensions?

SDKs
1

We have several app extensions bundled with our iOS app. There is some shared code between them where we plan on using Sentry to log messages. Before shipping this, I wanted to confirm whether or not it is safe to use Sentry from within an AppEx. My initial tests seem to indicate that it does indeed work, but since I didn’t see anything in the docs about App Extensions, I wanted to ask here first. Thanks!

1 Like
2

Hey,
We never thoroughly tested it but it should work without a problem.
If anything comes up, feel free to create a ticket on Github, will look into it asap then.

3

Should Mac extensions work too (e.g. Today widget for the sidebar or a Safari extension)?

4

Yes, should also work.

5

Ok, I managed to make it work both in a Today extension and in a Safari extension on the Mac. A few tips:

  • make sure the app and extension are signed
  • open the Console app and scan the logs coming from your app for any errors
  • enable the Outgoing Connections sandbox capability on the extension, otherwise any requests to Sentry will fail
  • if you build the first version before you add CocoaPods, the binary goes to a different folder than the one made with CocoaPods, so make sure the system doesn’t keep loading the old version

It’s mostly working now, although some exceptions are displayed as a generic [NSApplication _crashOnException:], but I’m not even sure if it’s specific to an extension context… If you want to debug this, here’s a sample project: https://www.dropbox.com/s/7kcdecfybikyfmc/SentryTodayTest.zip?dl=0

Code:

@IBAction func button1Pressed(sender: NSButton) {
    crashByNilUnwrap(item: nil)
}

func crashByNilUnwrap(item: String?) {
    print(item!.lowercased())
}

@IBAction func button2Pressed(sender: NSButton) {
    crashByMissingMethod(item: NSString())
}

func crashByMissingMethod(item: AnyObject) {
    FooHelper().explode()
}

- (void)explode {
    id string = [NSArray array];
    [string lowercaseString];
}

Trace for “button 1”:

SentryTodayExt 0x000108968bf3 TodayViewController.crashByNilUnwrap(item : String?) -> ()SentryTodayExt/TodayViewController.swift:54
SentryTodayExt 0x000108968ac1 TodayViewController.button1Pressed(sender : NSButton) -> ()SentryTodayExt/TodayViewController.swift:50

Trace for “button 2”:

AppKit 0x7fffb4f3e44e -[NSApplication _crashOnException:]
AppKit 0x7fffb4f3e382 -[NSApplication reportException:]
AppKit 0x7fffb4bd44c5 -[NSApplication run]
AppKit 0x7fffb4b9ee0e NSApplicationMain
6

Thank you for your write up and demo project :slight_smile:
I also tried to make the “button 2” crash display the correct stack trace but without success.
You can also set a Principal class but SentryCrashExceptionApplication isn’t working because it expects a NSViewServiceApplication our application inherits from NSApplication

I wasn’t able to figure out how to inherit from NSViewServiceApplication since this header seems to be in a private framework, so for now I think we will have to live with it.

7

Ok, makes sense, thanks.