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Next.js error tracking guide: recommend `@posthog/next`'s `onRequestError` instead of a hand-written one

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#20,867 2 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Newbie friendliness
76/100
Issue type
Documentation
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
next.js, node.js, typescript
Domain
documentation

Research direction

Start with the server-side section of the Next.js error tracking guide at https://posthog.com/docs/error-tracking/installation/nextjs and compare its hand-written instrumentation.ts example with the onRequestError and createOnRequestError exports from @posthog/next. Update the guide to recommend the package API and show the options example if useful; done when the documented setup reflects the built-in integration and its stated benefits.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

The server-side section of the Next.js error tracking guide has every app write its own onRequestError in instrumentation.ts: create a posthog-node client, parse the posthog-js cookie by hand to find the person, and call captureException.

@posthog/next already ships this as onRequestError / createOnRequestError, so the guide could be:

// instrumentation.ts
export { onRequestError } from '@posthog/next'

or, with options:

import { createOnRequestError } from '@posthog/next'

export const onRequestError = createOnRequestError({
  serverOptions: { requestTimeout: 3000, fetchRetryCount: 0 },
})

Compared with the guide's snippet, it:

  • reads the cookie for this project's key, not whichever ph_phc_…_posthog cookie the regex matches first
  • adds $session_id and $device_id, so the server exception links to the session replay
  • adds the Next.js request context ($pathname, $http_method, route path and type, error digest)
  • respects the posthog-js opt-out cookie
  • sends immediately and never throws from the hook

We only found @posthog/next by reading the posthog-js source, after hand-rolling the guide's version ourselves.

Dominant language
TypeScript
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Merged PRs (30d)
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