errorhandler

What is errorhandler?

The errorhandler npm package is an error handler middleware for use with Express.js applications. It provides full stack traces and error message responses for errors during development, and a minimal response not leaking internal information in production.

What are errorhandler's main functionalities?

Development Error Handling

In a development environment, errorhandler can provide detailed stack traces and error messages to the console and the client, helping developers debug issues.

app.use(errorhandler({ log: errorNotification }))

function errorNotification(err, str, req) {
  var title = 'Error in ' + req.method + ' ' + req.url;
  console.error(title, str);
}

Production Error Handling

In a production environment, errorhandler can be used to send a generic error message to the client, without leaking sensitive stack trace information.

if (process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production') {
  app.use(errorhandler());
}

Other packages similar to errorhandler

express-async-errors

This package is a drop-in replacement for Express's default error handler. It automatically catches errors from async routes and passes them to your error handlers. It does not provide the same level of detail for stack traces as errorhandler, but it is useful for handling errors in asynchronous code.

strong-error-handler

This is an error handler for use with Express.js applications, similar to errorhandler. It is designed to provide a more secure, production-ready error handling solution. It can be configured to hide or show stack traces and error details based on the environment.

README

errorhandler

Development-only error handler middleware.

This middleware is only intended to be used in a development environment, as the full error stack traces and internal details of any object passed to this module will be sent back to the client when an error occurs.

When an object is provided to Express as an error, this module will display as much about this object as possible, and will do so by using content negotiation for the response between HTML, JSON, and plain text.

• When the object is a standard Error object, the string provided by the stack property will be returned in HTML/text responses.
• When the object is a non-Error object, the result of util.inspect will be returned in HTML/text responses.
• For JSON responses, the result will be an object with all enumerable properties from the object in the response.

Install

This is a Node.js module available through the npm registry. Installation is done using the npm install command:

$ npm install errorhandler

API

var errorhandler = require('errorhandler')

errorhandler(options)

Create new middleware to handle errors and respond with content negotiation.

Options

Error handler accepts these properties in the options object.

log

Provide a function to be called with the error and a string representation of the error. Can be used to write the error to any desired location, or set to false to only send the error back in the response. Called as log(err, str, req, res) where err is the Error object, str is a string representation of the error, req is the request object and res is the response object (note, this function is invoked after the response has been written).

The default value for this option is true unless process.env.NODE_ENV === 'test'.

Possible values:

• true: Log errors using console.error(str).
• false: Only send the error back in the response.
• A function: pass the error to a function for handling.

Examples

Simple example

Basic example of adding this middleware as the error handler only in development with connect (express also can be used in this example).

var connect = require('connect')
var errorhandler = require('errorhandler')

var app = connect()

if (process.env.NODE_ENV === 'development') {
  // only use in development
  app.use(errorhandler())
}

Custom output location

Sometimes you may want to output the errors to a different location than STDERR during development, like a system notification, for example.

var connect = require('connect')
var errorhandler = require('errorhandler')
var notifier = require('node-notifier')

var app = connect()

if (process.env.NODE_ENV === 'development') {
  // only use in development
  app.use(errorhandler({ log: errorNotification }))
}

function errorNotification (err, str, req) {
  var title = 'Error in ' + req.method + ' ' + req.url

  notifier.notify({
    title: title,
    message: str
  })
}

License

MIT