Mismatch of type of Contexts between SDK and server

[pfdzm]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have checked for existing issues https://github.com/getsentry/sentry-javascript/issues
• I have reviewed the documentation https://docs.sentry.io/
• I am using the latest SDK release https://github.com/getsentry/sentry-javascript/releases

How do you use Sentry?

Sentry Saas (sentry.io)

Which SDK are you using?

@sentry/browser

SDK Version

7.46.0

Framework Version

No response

Link to Sentry event

No response

SDK Setup

No response

Steps to Reproduce

1. pass in a custom context when capturing an exception, with its value as undefined

Sentry.captureException(new Error('wat'), {
  contexts: {
    MyCustomContext: undefined
  }
})

2. look at the resulting issue in Sentry, a big red box appears at the top warning of an invalid value for a context
   

Expected Result

I would expect Sentry to either discard the context entirely (and omit the red error box) or fix the types declared in @sentry/types/types/context.d.ts to match what is expected.

Actual Result

The result is a big error box in your Sentry UI when viewing an issue:

[lforst]

Hi, this looks funny. Can you share a link to the event where this happened? Then we can look into it!

[finnboeger]

Hi, the event in question is https://afilio.sentry.io/issues/4114860619/events/f1707fbec6d1474881cddc9a070c68ac/

[lforst]

Is it possible you're setting the context to null? Generally, contexts need to be of type Record<string, Record<string, unknown>>: https://develop.sentry.dev/sdk/event-payloads/contexts/

We should maybe reflect that in the types.

[pfdzm]

@lforst I don't believe so, I did see null in the JSON payload of the event, too, but we are not setting this in our code. In fact, I just created a test error/event with minimal code like so:

function testException(): void {
  Sentry.captureException(new Error("test"), {
    contexts: {
      TestContext: undefined,
    },
  });
}

testException();

This is the resulting event: https://afilio.sentry.io/issues/4124217771/events/356379aa1b7c44eaa1fe91865b381058/

Note that the context is null in the JSON but not in our code that generated it.

In fact, if I try to pass a null context to captureException, TypeScript complains that the types are incompatible, so that seems to be working as intended.

[lforst]

Something is fishy here. As a pragmatic solution for now, I recommend you just either set an object as value or don't set it at all.