How to add monitoring to a wails app

[moisesrj97]

Hi! We are working on a Wails v2 app, and we'd love to include Sentry to monitor panics. Is there any way of implementing a custom panic handler that allows for recoveries?

Thanks in advance!

Edit: We'd like to "configure once and forget" so we don't have to catch every single potential error

[dosubot[bot]]

Hi @moisesrj97! I'm Dosu and I’m helping the wails team.

You can add Sentry monitoring to your Wails v2 app by initializing Sentry in the OnStartup lifecycle hook and implementing custom panic recovery where needed. Wails v2 has a built-in panic recovery system for frontend message processing, controlled by the DisablePanicRecovery option. By default, Wails recovers from panics and logs them. If you want to handle panics yourself (for example, to report them to Sentry), set DisablePanicRecovery to true in your app options and add your own defer/recover logic in your Go methods or goroutines. This lets you capture panics, report them to Sentry, and recover as needed. There is no global panic middleware, so you need to wrap critical entry points manually. You can find more details about these options and hooks in the Wails v2 options reference.

Example outline:

import (
    "github.com/getsentry/sentry-go"
    "context"
    "time"
    "github.com/wailsapp/wails/v2"
    "github.com/wailsapp/wails/v2/pkg/options"
)

func main() {
    wails.Run(&options.App{
        DisablePanicRecovery: true, // Let you handle panics
        OnStartup: func(ctx context.Context) {
            sentry.Init(sentry.ClientOptions{
                Dsn: "your-dsn-here",
            })
        },
        Bind: []interface{}{
            &MyService{},
        },
    })
}

type MyService struct{}

func (m *MyService) DangerousMethod() {
    defer func() {
        if err := recover(); err != nil {
            sentry.CurrentHub().Recover(err)
            sentry.Flush(2 * time.Second)
            // Optionally: handle recovery logic here
        }
    }()
    // ... your code that might panic
}

Initialize Sentry in OnStartup, set DisablePanicRecovery: true, and wrap your methods with defer/recover to capture and report panics. For goroutines, use the same pattern. This gives you full control over panic monitoring and recovery in your Wails v2 app.

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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[moisesrj97]

We'd like a solution that we can configure once, so we don't have to call sentry o each individual function

[dosubot[bot]]

Wails v2 doesn't support a global panic handler or middleware for Sentry—you have to wrap each entry point (like service methods or goroutines) with your own defer/recover logic if you want to report panics to Sentry. This is due to how panic recovery is implemented in the dispatcher and the lack of extensibility for user-defined handlers in v2 [source].

To reduce boilerplate, you can create a helper function that wraps your logic and handles panic recovery and Sentry reporting. For example:

func WithPanicReporting(fn func()) {
    defer func() {
        if err := recover(); err != nil {
            sentry.CurrentHub().Recover(err)
            sentry.Flush(2 * time.Second)
        }
    }()
    fn()
}

// Usage:
func (m *MyService) DangerousMethod() {
    WithPanicReporting(func() {
        // ... your code that might panic
    })
}

If you need a true "configure once" global panic handler, Wails v3 introduces a PanicHandler option that lets you centralize panic handling and integrate with Sentry for all bound service methods [source]. In v2, though, helper wrappers are the best way to minimize repetition. Let me know if you want help designing a wrapper for your use case!

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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