---
title: How to add context data to exceptions in Ruby
published: "2015-07-23"
publisher: Honeybadger
author: Starr Horne
category: Ruby articles
tags:
  - Rails
  - Ruby
description: "Sometimes the standard backtrace / error message combo isn't enough. Sometimes you need extra data to locate the cause of an error. In this post we'll discuss three easy ways to add more context to your exceptions."
url: "https://www.honeybadger.io/blog/how-to-add-context-data-to-exceptions-in-ruby/"
---

Sometimes the standard backtrace / error message combo isn't enough. Sometimes you need extra data to locate the cause of an error. Fortunately, it's super easy to do in Ruby.

## Customizing the error message

The simplest way to add contextual information to your errors is to add it to the exception's message. In the example below I'm catching an exception and re-raising it with a new message:

```ruby
begin raise "foo" rescue => e raise e.class, "bar" end # RuntimeError: bar
```

A good use case for this approach might be when you're rendering a template. Any exception that happens inside the template doesn't know the template's filename. But that's pretty important information for you to know when debugging.

Here's an example of how you could rescue template errors and prepend the file name to the message.

```ruby
filename = "mytemplate.erb" template = File.read(filename) # Contains "<% 1/0 %>" e = ERB.new(template) begin e.result rescue => e raise e.class, [filename, e.message].join(": ") end # ZeroDivisionError: mytemplate.erb: divided by 0
```

## Wrapping the exception

Another option for including contextual information in exceptions is to create a custom exception. Since exceptions are just classes like everything else in Ruby, you can add as many attr\_accessors as your heart desires.

Here's how that might look:

```ruby
TemplateError < StandardError attr_reader :filename def initialize(msg, filename) @filename = filename super(msg) end end begin ERB.new(template).result rescue => e raise TemplateError.new(e.message, filename) end
```

## Using Honeybadger's context feature

Ok, ok. I had to put this in, since Honeybadger has a pretty slick way to add contextual information to your exceptions. Instead of modifying the exception object, you simply use the Honeybadger.context method from anywhere in your application.

```ruby
class ApplicationController .... def find_current_user user = ... Honeybadger.context(user_id: user.id, user_email: user.email, user.scope: "user") end end
```

When an exception happens, the context data is reported along with it. You can then view the data along with other exception data in our web or mobile apps.

[![Honeybadger's context feature lets you attach whatever info you need to your exceptions without much code. ](https://www.honeybadger.io/images/2015/07/context-1024x232.png)_Honeybadger's context feature lets you attach whatever info you need to your exceptions without much code._](https://www.honeybadger.io/images/2015/07/context.png)

---

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