Processing Error Reports with CrashFix Server

CrashFix Server is a web-based crash report analysis software. CrashFix server allows to easily receive, store, organize and analyze crash reports sent by your C++ application. It is the easiest way to store and process error reports sent by CrashRpt library. CrashFix server can be downloaded from the CrashFix Server Website.

An example of CrashFix user interface is shown in the figure below:

CrashFix Features

Below, the main features of CrashFix are briefly described:

Crash reports are delivered through HTTP (or HTTPS) connection to your CrashFix server. CrashFix server automatically receives crash reports and stores them in the database. CrashFix is a server software hosted on your own server infrastructure. This advantage is especially valuable in corporate environment where crash reports and debugging symbols must be stored privately as sensitive data.

Crash report files being sent by an application to CrashFix server are received and stored in project space. If a user needs to access the project to browse and modify crash reports and/or perform other actions, the administrator may assign the user a role in the desired project. A project has associated disc quotas defining how many disc space the project may occupy.

Among hundreds of crash reports there may be only several different problems, while others just duplicate the information about these problems. CrashFix groups similar crash reports into collections. Grouping duplicate crash reports allows to concentrate on most popular bugs. This makes it easier to analyze crash reports - you do not have to view many crash reports in turn, instead you may view a single crash report or several crash reports from a collection, analyze them and (if desired) open a new bug for the entire collection.

CrashFix has a built-in bug tracker. CrashFix allows to associate bugs with crash collections and/or with individual crash reports. Ideally, crash collections and bugs are in one-to-one relationship, meaning each crash collection has exactly one bug. The bug tracker allows several project members to collaborate: a developer may enhance the code that caused crash, a quality assurance engineer may verify that the problem has been fixed, and the project manager may monitor what bugs are not fixed yet.

CrashFix generates statistics reports, so you can browse crash report upload statistics, watch their version distribution, top crash collections, bug dynamics, recent bug changes, symbol file upload dynamics and other useful information.

For additional information on CrashFix features, please refer to CrashFix Documentation.

Configuring CrashRpt to Send Error Reports to CrashFix Server

Below, instructions are provided on how to configure CrashRpt to send crash reports to CrashFix server.

The CrashRpt configuration is typically stored in CR_INSTALL_INFO structure. In order to send crash reports to CrashFix server, you must set the following structure fields:

• Set pszAppName field with the name of the project you want to store crash reports in (you should create a new project in CrashFix web application). For example, if you have created MyApp project, set the pszAppName field with the value "MyApp".

• Set pszAppVersion field with the version of your application. For example, if the current version of MyApp project is v.1.0.0, set the pszAppVersion field with the value "1.0.0".

• Set pszUrl field with the the following URL address: http://example.com/crashfix/index.php/crashReport/uploadExternal. In the example above, replace the example.com server name with your own CrashFix server name.

• Set uPriorities field as shown below:

  info.uPriorities[CR_HTTP] = 1;                      // Use HTTP.
  info.uPriorities[CR_SMTP] = CR_NEGATIVE_PRIORITY;   // Not use SMTP.
  info.uPriorities[CR_SMAPI] = CR_NEGATIVE_PRIORITY;  // Not use Simple MAPI.  
  

• For dwFlags field, append the flag CR_INST_HTTP_BINARY_ENCODING.

• Other fields of the structure may be configured on your choise (see Using CrashRpt API page for more information).

Below is an example of the code you may finally have:

CR_INSTALL_INFO info;

memset(&info, 0, sizeof(CR_INSTALL_INFO));
info.cb = sizeof(CR_INSTALL_INFO);  
info.pszAppName = _T("MyApp");     // Define application name.
info.pszAppVersion = _T("1.0.0");  // Define application version.
// URL for sending reports over HTTP.                   
info.pszUrl = _T("http://example.com/crashfix/index.php/crashReport/uploadExternal");         
// Define delivery transport priorities. 
info.uPriorities[CR_HTTP] = 1;                     // Use HTTP.
info.uPriorities[CR_SMTP] = CR_NEGATIVE_PRIORITY;  // Not use SMTP.
info.uPriorities[CR_SMAPI] = CR_NEGATIVE_PRIORITY; // Not use Simple MAPI.  
// Define flags.
info.dwFlags = 0;                    
// Install all available exception handlers.
info.dwFlags |= CR_INST_ALL_POSSIBLE_HANDLERS; 
// Use binary encoding for HTTP uploads (recommended).    
info.dwFlags |= CR_INST_HTTP_BINARY_ENCODING;  

See also:

• CrashFix Server Website