Removing context?

[reintroducing]

Hello,
I use the Raven.setExtraContext quite extensively on my pages. That being said, I have a page where an object will be added to context, then open a modal, add more context to the page based on some of the modal information. This helps me get insight into errors in the modal. Great. Now the user closes the modal but that modal information is still there and if an error on the page behind it is thrown the modal context data is still there. Which brings me to:

1. Is there a way to delete a key from context that was set?
2. If not, is it possible to add such functionality to raven?

Thanks!

[benvinegar]

It's a little gross, but this is possible. If you do setExtraContext(undefined), it will remove all existing extra context. Then you can re-add the context with a second call to setExtraContext(myContext). You can use this to remove values.

2. If not, is it possible to add such functionality to raven?

I'll have to think about what's a nice way to expose this without further bloating the API. I definitely don't want removeExtraContext, removeUserContext, removeTagsContext, etc.

[reintroducing]

So I was just thinking about something like this:

setExtraContext({
  foo: ...alot of object data here,
  bar: ...more different object data her
});

// later...

removeExtraContext('bar');

// what remains in context is just 'foo' data

Alternately you can also take in an array to removeExtraContext and iterate over keys and remove them if one is provided.

The hope is not to remove everything in context, just the extra data that was added when, in my case, a modal was opened, but when it was closed i just want to remove the modal data and not remove all the other stuff i added to the context when the page originally loaded.

[Nevon]

If you just want to delete some property, you can get the context, unset the context like Ben said and then re-set it without the property you wanted to remove.

setExtraContext({
  foo: 'foo',
  bar: 'bar'
})

// later
const { extra } = Raven.getContext()
Raven.setExtraContext(undefined)
let {bar, ...newExtra} = extra
// newExtra is now { foo: 'foo' }
Raven.setExtraContext(newExtra)

I agree with Ben that exposing a bunch of remove<Something>Context would be kind of ugly. I would argue that setExtraContext should replace the entire extra property on the context. If you wanted to preserve the existing extra context, you should take care to read it and extend it yourself. That said, it would be a very API breaking change.

[reintroducing]

@Nevon Thanks, thats actually what I was hoping to do but never found Raven.getContext().extra in the docs. Could you point me to where you pulled that from? I could certainly do the managing and updating of the extra object myself but had no idea how to retrieve it.

[Nevon]

I got it from the source. I wasn't aware that it wasn't documented. Given that it's not prefixed with an underscore and is exposed on the Raven object, I would assume that it's meant as a public method. Perhaps @benvinegar can let us know if this is considered an internal method that we shouldn't be using.

[reintroducing]

@benvinegar Could you please comment on the above just so we know if this is usable or not even though its not documented? Appreciate it.

[benvinegar]

If it doesn't have an underscore, it's public and we'll preserve it between minor revs (but if it's not clear in general I try to avoid deprecating public methods even in major versions).

[reintroducing]

Thanks @benvinegar. Is it possible to get this added to the public facing docs so everyone is aware of it? Might be useful to show a usage example as well as outlined here.

[felixfbecker]

How is it possible to clear user data on a user logout? Raven allowed Raven.setUserData(undefined), but the user parameter on scope.setUser() is required and merged with existing data.

[kamilogorek]

@felixfbecker

Sentry.configureScope(scope => scope.setUser({}))

User interface has no required attributes – https://github.com/getsentry/sentry-javascript/blob/master/packages/types/src/index.ts
and setUser doesn’t merge with existing data – https://github.com/getsentry/sentry-javascript/blob/master/packages/hub/src/scope.ts

[felixfbecker]

That's literally what it says in the docblock though:

sentry-javascript/packages/hub/src/scope.ts

Line 88 in 57b3ce9

* @param user User context object to merge into current context.