Rollbar Error Investigation

Use the rollbar CLI to query and manage Rollbar errors. This tool is optimized for investigating production errors, providing context for bug fixes, and resolving issues.

Prerequisites

Ensure ROLLBAR_ACCESS_TOKEN is set in the environment, or a .rollbar.yaml config file exists in the project.

Common Workflows

Check what errors happened recently

# Errors from the last 8 hours
rollbar items --since "8 hours ago" --level error,critical

# Errors from overnight
rollbar items --since "12 hours ago" --level error,critical --env production

# All active issues
rollbar items --status active --limit 10

Investigate a specific error

# Get details for error #123
rollbar item 123

# Get full context for bug fixing (includes stack trace, request data, browser, user email)
rollbar context 123

# Include multiple recent occurrences
rollbar context 123 --occurrences 5

The context output includes (when available):

• Exception class, message, and full stack trace
• Request URL, method, and the user’s browser (User-Agent header)
• Logged-in user’s email address and ID
• Server host, branch, and code version

Search for specific errors

# Find TypeError issues
rollbar items --query "TypeError" --level error

# Find errors in a specific environment
rollbar items --env production --level error --since "24h"

# Find most frequent errors
rollbar items --sort occurrences --limit 10

View error occurrences

# List recent occurrences for an item
rollbar occurrences --item 123 --limit 5

# Get details for a specific occurrence (includes browser, user email, request info)
rollbar occurrence 453568801204

Resolve items

Mark items as resolved after fixing the underlying issue (requires write token):

# Resolve a single item
rollbar resolve 123

# Resolve multiple items at once
rollbar resolve 93 95 97

# Resolve by internal UUID
rollbar resolve --uuid 8675309

Output Formats

• --output table (default): Human-readable tables
• --output json: Full JSON for parsing
• --output compact or --ai: Token-efficient format for AI context
• --output markdown: Structured markdown

Key Flags

Typical Investigation Flow

1. List recent errors: rollbar items --since "8 hours ago" --level error,critical
2. Identify the issue: Look at error titles and occurrence counts
3. Get full context: rollbar context <item-number> for the specific error
4. Analyze stack trace: The context output includes file paths and line numbers
5. Check patterns: Look at multiple occurrences to understand the trigger
6. Fix and resolve: After deploying a fix, mark the item as resolved: rollbar resolve <item-number>

Example: Overnight Error Triage

When asked “what errors happened overnight?” or similar:

# Get overnight errors (last 12 hours of night)
rollbar items --since "12 hours ago" --level error,critical --env production --ai

# For the most critical one, get full context
rollbar context <item-number>

The --ai flag provides compact output that’s token-efficient while preserving all essential information.

Example: Resolve Items After Fix

When asked “mark items 93 and 95 as resolved” or similar:

# Resolve multiple items after deploying a fix
rollbar resolve 93 95

Note: Resolving items requires a project access token with “write” scope. If you get a permission error, the token only has read access.