Migrating to Production

Moving from a local development environment to a live production environment requires careful attention to security and configuration. Follow this checklist to ensure a smooth migration.

1. Switch Your API Key

The most important step is to switch from your development key (lt_development_...) to a production key (lt_production_...).

• Generate a new key in the dashboard scoped specifically for the production environment.
• Environment Isolation: Remember that development data will not show up in your production workspace, and vice versa.

2. Secure Your Keys

Ensure that your production keys are stored securely and never committed to version control.

• Use Secrets Management: Use tools like GitHub Secrets, Vercel Environment Variables, or AWS Secrets Manager.
• Least Privilege: Use a Write-Only (wo_) key for ingestion if your production app doesn’t need to perform queries.

3. Review Plan Limits

Production traffic is often significantly higher than development traffic.

• Check Your Tier: Ensure your current plan (Free, Dev, or Pro) has high enough monthly log limits and retention for your production needs.
• Monitor Usage: Use the GET /usage endpoint or the dashboard to keep an eye on your consumption during the first few days of production.

4. Implement Error Handling

Production apps should handle API errors gracefully to ensure logging doesn’t impact your user experience.

• Network Failures: Implement retries with exponential backoff for ingestion requests.
• Rate Limits: Respect the X-RateLimit-* headers and handle 429 Too Many Requests responses.

5. Enable User Activity Feeds (Optional)

If you’re using Logtrail to power user-facing activity feeds:

• Audit Actions: Review the actions you’ve flagged as “public” to ensure no sensitive technical information is exposed to end users.
• Test Templates: Verify that your human-readable activity templates look correct with live production data.