How to Properly Render Exception Tracebacks Recorded with Phoenix span.record_exception()

·Aug 02, 2026 07:28 PM(edited)·

Hello team. I am using Phoenix to record exceptions while tracing, I use span.record_exception(e) and it did record the exception in the Events tab, but the issue is it's inside JSON string, there are many \ s and format is gone and not easy to read. I do not know which action I should perform to correctly render the exception traceback. Currently I am using Phoenix in small and simple project locally, I do not have other dedicated exception tracing system, I wonder that what is the correct approach to view it, please educate me.

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3 comments

· Sorted by Oldest

RunLLM
APP
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(edited)·
It seems likely that Phoenix currently records exceptions as stringified JSON in the Events tab, which can result in unreadable, escaped text with many backslashes. There is a known enhancement request to add a "View as JSON" or "Unescape and Format" button in the UI to improve readability, but as of now, the solution is not yet generally available—though a FORMAT button was proposed to address this exact issue. My understanding is that, until this feature is released, you may need to manually copy the JSON and use an external formatter to view it clearly. If you want to improve the rendering within Phoenix itself, you may want to follow or upvote the related enhancement issue to signal its importance. There is no indication in the data sources that a user-side configuration or code change can alter how exceptions are rendered in the UI at this time. Would you like more detail on workarounds or the current state of this enhancement? Sources: - <https://github.com/Arize-ai/phoenix/issues/10917|ENHANCEMENT: Add "View as JSON" support for stringified JSON in Trace Attributes>
💡 Hint: Mention @herald in the thread for followups.
Yasmine F.
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hey Darcy C. thanks for bringing this to our attention! we just merged in a fix for this that should improve the attribute rendering on this events tab. I'll update you once it is released.
Yasmine F.
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this has been fixed in phoenix v19.16.0, let me know if you encounter any more issues after upgrading! here is the relevant PR: github.com/Arize-ai/phoenix/pull/15028