how logrocket works
LogRocket works by recording user sessions on your web application, which includes capturing user interactions, network requests and responses, console logs, and JavaScript errors. The recorded sessions are then available for playback in the LogRocket dashboard, providing a detailed, visual representation of what the user experienced. This tool is especially useful for developers and product teams to identify and debug issues, improve user experience, and track performance over time. Here's a closer look at how LogRocket operates:
1. Event Listeners
LogRocket uses various event listeners to capture user interactions with your application. These interactions include clicks, scrolls, typing (with privacy controls to exclude sensitive information), and more. By listening to DOM (Document Object Model) events, LogRocket can reconstruct a user's session with a high degree of accuracy.
2. Capturing Network Activity
LogRocket also captures network requests and responses. This feature is crucial for debugging issues related to API calls, slow network responses, or unexpected request outcomes. It hooks into the XMLHTTPRequest and Fetch API to record this data without significantly impacting performance.
3. Error Logging
JavaScript errors are automatically captured by LogRocket, including stack traces, which helps in pinpointing exactly where in the code an error occurred. This feature integrates with the window's onerror and onunhandledrejection event handlers to catch uncaught exceptions and unhandled promise rejections.
4. Session Replay
The data captured, including the DOM changes, user inputs (while respecting privacy settings), and network requests, are serialized and sent to LogRocket's servers. LogRocket then reconstructs this data into a video-like replay of the session, allowing developers to see exactly what the user saw and did on the application. This replay includes the ability to inspect network requests and console logs that occurred during the session.
5. Privacy and Security
LogRocket provides mechanisms to mask sensitive information, ensuring compliance with privacy laws like GDPR and CCPA. Developers can configure which input fields should be masked (such as passwords and credit card fields) and can exclude capturing data from specific pages or components.
6. Performance Impact
LogRocket is designed to minimize its impact on application performance. It employs efficient data serialization techniques and throttles network usage to ensure that the recording process does not degrade the user experience. The data is sent to LogRocket's servers asynchronously, and the heavy lifting of processing the data is done on their servers, not on the user's device.
7. Data Transmission and Storage
The collected data is transmitted securely (using HTTPS) to LogRocket's servers, where it is processed and stored. The data is then accessible through the LogRocket dashboard for analysis, with various tools available to filter, search, and analyze user sessions.