Errbit + HTTPS: Setting up Errbit reporter (Airbrake v5 gem) to work with self-signed HTTPS certificate

Note: If you're using old Errbit version (0.2.0, 0.4.0) and an old Airbrake version (v4) please refer to this manual to make it work with self-signed certificates.

Having an error catcher like Errbit behind SSL is generally a good idea. Especially when Errbit is hosted on a different server than you application (for example when you manage multiple apps with one Errbit instance). In many cases you will have a self-signed certificate (why would you pay for a cert for internal tool). If you try to use it with Airbrake, you will see following error:

Airbrake:
  HTTP error: SSL_connect returned=1 errno=0 state=unknown state: certificate verify failed

Unfortunately, global SSL certificates verification disabling hack (solution that used to work with Airbrake notifier v4) won't work:

# No longer working!
OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_PEER = OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_NONE

Luckily, Airbrake notifier is written pretty well, so hacking it (and disabling per request SSL certificate verification) is not hard at all. Here's a full code you need to place in config/initializers/errbit.rb to make it work:

module Patches
  module Airbrake
    module SyncSender
      def build_https(uri)
        super.tap do |req|
          req.verify_mode = OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_NONE
        end
      end
    end
  end
end

Airbrake::SyncSender.prepend(::Patches::Airbrake::SyncSender)

After that (and configuring Airbrake notifier), you can test it out like this:

Airbrake.notify :test