Improve error handling and notification

[pmackay]

After a recent deploy there was a problem with verification on production. This was due to stricter validation of the addresses.

• How could this have been made more obvious when verification checks were being made?
• Could this lib be reviewed for places where more useful console output would make tracking down problems easier?

[pmackay]

@felixwatts could you have a think about where better logging or error reporting might help with understanding the recent verification issues?

[felixwatts]

Test honeybadger error logging

[pmackay]

@felixwatts any thoughts on improving this?

[felixwatts]

As far as I can tell, what happened was

• A long time ago the app generated one form of Ethereum addresses
• Then we upgraded to produce a newer form. At this point we used a library that accepted both forms.
• Then much more recently we upgraded a library version that no longer accepts the old form
• In my test database and in all tests we only had addressed of the new form, but in the production DB we had some of the old form
• The library correctly reported this in a Javascript console message

We could have avoided this by specifically having unit tests that pass becuase the app can handle the old form of Ethereum address. These would have broken with the library upgrade and alerted me to migrate the production data.

So in general, when deprecating support for a data format that exists in the database we should create a unit test that passes because the old data format is still supported.

[pmackay]

Please suggest if any code changes should be made to close this now? Either way, be good to add something to a checklist.

[felixwatts]

I don't think any code changes are necessary. I could add my recommendation above to documentation if we have a good place for that? Like a doc about development best practices?