Change the default text of /public/500.html?

rubyonrails-core
1

Hello all,

For various understandable reasons, new apps (and new Rails developers) are likely to generate internal errors, which default to the following message (/public/500.html): "We're sorry, but something went wrong. We've been notified about this issue and we'll take a look at it shortly."

As the developer, I can look at the logs to see the 500 Internal Service Error and find the issue. However, this is very misleading to a site visitor, because nobody was actually notified about the issue and maybe nobody would take a look at it shortly. If the 500 error message did not claim notification, there's at least a chance that the visitor can communicate with the developer through some other channel and the developer would be able to check logs and solve the issue.

If the default behavior does not alert the developer to an issue, the default message shouldn't state that a notification has happened. Instead, something like the following already-commonly-used error might be more appropriate: "Application Error: An error occurred in the application and your page could not be served." We might also include, if default logging is sufficiently detailed: "If you are the application owner, check your logs for details."

Can we change that in the default /public/500.html created by the rails generator? I'm guessing that newbie Rails developers are more likely to get/cause these error messages than average, and simultaneously less likely to have configured an exception notification system. Those experienced enough to have an exception notification system can change the 500 page as they like.

If a false claim of notification was deliberately chosen, what was the logic behind that?

Thanks much!

WBT

2

"We're sorry, but something went wrong. We've been notified about this issue and we'll take a look at it shortly."

I was also always bothered by it. By default, nobody was notified about any issue and they will only take a look if someone tells them or if they accidentally see exceptions in production.log. The default 500.html is a lie.

"Application Error: An error occurred in the application and your page could not be served."

With risk of this turning into a bike shed discussion, I'll throw my own tweak in here:

"Application Error: An error occurred in the application and the page could not be served."

This is a good message. It doesn't tell you lies and it doesn't suggest to "try again" because, in my experience, most errors are persistent so telling users to "try again" will lead to frustration.

I wouldn't put the "If you are the owner, check the logs" bit. If you know enough to boot up an application in production mode, you know about the existance of application logs for each environment.

3

This also always bothered me. I like this proposed message.

4

Seems that the message about notification is already removed on edge. https://github.com/rails/rails/commits/master/railties/lib/rails/generators/rails/app/templates/public/500.html