- How do I install jenssegers/rollbar in a Laravel app?
- Run composer require jenssegers/rollbar and pin the version explicitly, for example 1.5.1 rather than a caret constraint, so transitive rollbar-php upgrades cannot silently change payload behavior. On Laravel 5.5 and later the service provider and facade are auto-discovered; on 5.4 you must register them manually in config/app.php. Then publish the configuration file and set your Rollbar token and environment variables.
- Which Laravel and PHP versions does jenssegers/rollbar support?
- The package targets roughly Laravel 5.x on PHP 7.x, and its constraints on illuminate/support are the practical ceiling. Check that your fleet is inside that window before installing; if any service runs Laravel 8+ or PHP 8, Composer will not resolve this package and you should use the official rollbar/rollbar-laravel SDK instead. Do not let an existing integration elsewhere anchor the whole fleet to an unsupported framework version.
- How do I configure the Rollbar access token and environment?
- After publishing config/rollbar.php, set the access token and environment name through environment variables referenced in that file. Because a wrong token or a mismatched environment name fails silently, verify the values in each environment rather than assuming a green dashboard means data is flowing. Use distinct environment values per stage so staging errors do not pollute production triage.
- Does jenssegers/rollbar automatically report exceptions to Rollbar?
- Yes. The package hooks into Laravel's exception handler and reports uncaught exceptions, warnings, and logged errors to Rollbar with stack traces and request context. Confirm that there is a single reporting owner in App\Exceptions\Handler, because a competing reporter such as Sentry, Ignition, or Telescope can duplicate quota burn or make reporting look like it works when only Telescope is seeing the errors. A smoke-test route that throws is the simplest confirmation.
- How do I forward Laravel logs to Rollbar with this package?
- The package registers a Monolog handler so entries written through Laravel's logging stack can be forwarded to Rollbar at a configurable minimum severity level. Set that level in config/rollbar.php so you do not ship every debug line to your dashboard. It cooperates with your other logging channels rather than replacing them, so review your stack configuration before going live.
- How do I scrub sensitive data like passwords and cookies before sending to Rollbar?
- Populate the scrub_fields list in config/rollbar.php with the request bodies, headers, cookies, and session keys that must never be transmitted, then verify empirically that the list actually reaches the SDK by triggering a test error and inspecting the payload in Rollbar. A missing field is a compliance incident, not a cosmetic bug. Have a named person sign off on the field list before launch.
- What is the difference between jenssegers/rollbar and rollbar/rollbar-laravel?
- jenssegers/rollbar is an older community wrapper around the Rollbar PHP notifier that only resolves on roughly Laravel 5.x and PHP 7.x, and it is no longer maintained upstream. rollbar/rollbar-laravel is the official, currently supported Laravel SDK with modern framework support. If you are starting fresh or running Laravel 8+, use the official package, and keep config key names like access_token, environment, level, scrub_fields, and person_fn aligned so a future swap is a config diff rather than a redesign.
- Does jenssegers/rollbar slow down requests during an error storm?
- The transport is synchronous on the error path, so under an error storm each failing request can block on an HTTPS POST to Rollbar before returning a 500, which is how partial degradation turns into a full outage. Configure a short timeout, sampling, and payload caps, then run a synthetic burst test in staging to measure the latency delta before canary. Also confirm egress to Rollbar is allowed, otherwise you get silent failures rather than slow ones.
- Is jenssegers/rollbar still maintained, and can I use it with Laravel 8 or later?
- No. Version 1.5.1 was the last release and the upstream project is archived, so every future Laravel upgrade is blocked until you replace it. It cannot resolve on Laravel 8+ or PHP 8, where the official Rollbar SDK is the answer. The practical mitigation is to hide the Rollbar facade behind your own ErrorReporter interface from day one so the eventual migration is one new class plus one container binding.
- How do I verify Rollbar is actually receiving errors from my Laravel app?
- Add a temporary route or Artisan command that throws a deliberate exception, then confirm the event appears in the correct Rollbar environment with the expected stack trace and scrubbed payload. Silent failure is the default: a wrong token, blocked egress, or environment-name mismatch produces zero telemetry and zero warnings. Repeat the check after any Composer update that touches illuminate/support or rollbar-php.