Why should you use Sentry in your mobile app?

In today’s competitive app market, providing a seamless user experience is crucial for retaining and attracting new users. However, bugs and errors can quickly derail even the most well-designed app, leading to frustration and lost users. Is there a tool that can help developers effectively track and resolve app issues, ultimately leading to a better user experience? In this article, we will explore the steps necessary to successfully integrate Sentry into a Flutter application, providing tips and best practices along the way.

What is Sentry?

Sentry is a powerful error-tracking platform used by developers to monitor and fix crashes in their applications. Integrating Sentry into a Flutter application can greatly improve the overall stability and user experience by providing real-time insights into errors and issues. With Sentry, developers can quickly identify and resolve bugs, resulting in a smoother and more reliable app.

Why should you use Sentry?

Sentry can bring numerous benefits to Flutter apps. Here are just a few of the advantages that this tool can provide for Flutter app development.

1. Real-time Error Tracking: Sentry helps developers to monitor their apps for errors in real-time. This allows them to quickly identify and resolve any issues before they become major problems for users.
2. Improved User Experience: With Sentry, developers can detect and fix bugs and crashes more quickly, leading to a better overall user experience. This results in fewer frustrated users and lower rates of app abandonment.
3. Enhanced Debugging Capabilities: Sentry provides detailed error reports that allow developers to track down the root cause of issues. This includes stack traces, context data, and session information, which helps developers to identify and fix the issue more efficiently.
4. Detailed Bug Report: This feature allows developers to see screenshots from the time of the bug or crash, what is more, properly configured Sentry SDK will also attach network responses and queries which will help developers understand the problem, also the logs can contain data about app routing or custom dev logs.
5. Cross-platform Support: Sentry supports a wide range of platforms, including Flutter. This means that developers can use Sentry to track issues and bugs on multiple platforms, including iOS and Android, with just one tool.
6. Customizable Notifications: Sentry allows developers to set up custom notifications and integrations with tools like Slack and Jira. This allows them to receive real-time notifications about issues and errors so that they can respond quickly and efficiently.
7. Improved Collaboration: Sentry makes it easier for teams to collaborate on fixing issues and bugs. With Sentry, developers can assign issues to team members, leave comments, and track progress, all in one place.

Sentry best practices

Sentry provides a range of features to help developers identify and resolve issues in their applications. To get the most out of Sentry, it is essential to follow best practices.

• By enabling the attached screenshot feature, developers can get a visual representation of the error, making it easier to identify the problem. This capability is especially useful in the early stage of app development when there are a lot of UI bugs.
• Attaching network logs provides valuable information about the request and response, allowing developers to identify any issues with the API or maybe user settings or account.
• The Logging Integration allows developers to capture logs from their application and send them to Sentry for analysis. This gives us a more complete picture of the error, allowing for faster and more accurate resolution.
• Sentry also offers the ability to track navigation, developers can see how users interact with their app and identify any issues that may be affecting the user experience. This information is then stored and analyzed to identify any potential issues, such as slow load times or broken links.

How to integrate Sentry?

Integrating Sentry into a Flutter app is a simple process that can be done in a few steps. Here’s how to do it:

1. Sign up for a Sentry account and create a new project.

2. Install the Sentry SDK for Flutter by adding the Sentry package to your pubspec.yaml file.

3. Initialize the Sentry SDK in your Flutter app by adding the following code to your main.dart file inside the main function:

import 'package:sentry/sentry.dart';

runZonedGuarded(() async {
 await SentryFlutter.init(
   (options) {
     options.dsn = YOUR_DSN_HERE;
     options.tracesSampleRate = 1.0;
     options.addIntegration(
       LoggingIntegration(), /// If you use Logging library for logs 
     );
     options.attachScreenshot = true;
    },
 );

 runApp(
   SentryScreenshotWidget(
     child: await _prepareApplication(),
   ),
 );
}, (exception, stackTrace) async {
 await Sentry.captureException(exception, stackTrace: stackTrace);
});​

4. Replace “YOUR_DSN_HERE” with the DSN (Data Source Name) for your Sentry project.

5. What is more you can add to `routerDelegate` the SentryNavigatorObserver() to track routing inside the app.

That’s it! You have successfully integrated Sentry into your Flutter app with these simple steps. Sentry will now start tracking errors and crashes in real-time, providing valuable information to help identify and resolve issues more quickly. More information you can find here.

Conclusion

With the Sentry SDK for Flutter, the integration process is simple, and the platform provides detailed error reports and custom event tracking capabilities. This information can be used to make informed decisions about how to improve the app and provide a better experience for users that is why we used Sentry in our projects like Squaddy, SimSim or Onoco for backend purposes.

By integrating Sentry into a Flutter app, developers can ensure that they are getting the most out of the error-tracking platform and effectively tracking and resolving issues in their app. With Sentry, developers can provide a better experience for their users and keep their apps running smoothly.

Originally published at https://fivedottwelve.com on March 10, 2023.