jsonify-error

jsonify-error

It's 2018 and neither JSON.stringify(e) nor console.log(e) behave as nicely as they could when e is an error.

With jsonify-error, use jsonifyError(e) instead of e. It produces a plain object with everything one could wish to see about an error.

Installation

In Browsers

For browsers, simply include one of the dists in your entry point, such as dist/jsonify-error.js. The dists are available in jsDelivr:

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/jsonify-error@1.2.2/dist/jsonify-error.js" integrity="sha384-IlFtQEeOfO1Uw6QCHwhpQFXZE7CghDHsPkCgjjHiMZmzEYBNQV3UmBpfulfxC/QJ" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>

The following dists are available (with source maps):

• dist/jsonify-error.js
• dist/jsonify-error.min.js
• dist/jsonify-error.es5.js
• dist/jsonify-error.es5.min.js

In Node

In node, as usual, simply do:

npm install --save jsonify-error

Example result

The resulting plain object has the form:

{
    "name": "TypeError",
    "className": "TypeError",
    "message": "It can't be a string",
    "superclasses": ["Error", "Object"],
    "enumerableFields": {
        // If the error has other fields they appear here (including in the prototype chain):
        "someField": "someValue"
    },
    "stack": [
        "TypeError: It can't be a string", 
        "at z (E:\\test.js:15:15)", 
        "at E:\\test.js:10:9", 
        "at Array.forEach (native)", 
        "at y (E:\\test.js:9:13)", 
        "at x (E:\\test.js:5:5)", 
        "at w (E:\\test.js:24:9)", 
        "at Object.<anonymous> (E:\\test.js:32:1)", 
        "at Module._compile (module.js:570:32)", 
        "at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:579:10)", 
        "at Module.load (module.js:487:32)"
    ]
}

Example usage: try-catch

var jsonifyError = require("jsonify-error");

try {
    // ...
} catch (e) {
    console.error(jsonifyError(e));
    process.exit(1);
}

Example usage: promises

For better error logs of unhandled errors in promises, the recommended solution is to use the sibling module, better-promise-error-log. But if you insist, you can do:

var jsonifyError = require("jsonify-error");

somethingAsync().then(() => {
    // ...
}).catch(error => {
    console.error(jsonifyError(e));
    // process.exit(1); // Exiting or not depends on your situation
});

Example usage: with express

var jsonifyError = require("jsonify-error");

app.get('/your/api', (req, res) => {
    // ...
    // Instead of res.status(500).json(error), do:
    res.status(500).json(jsonifyError(error));
});

Example usage: overriding console

require("jsonify-error").overrideConsole();
// Now console.log, console.warn and console.error automatically
// call jsonifyError() on each argument that is instanceof Error
// before logging. Note that overriding native functions/objects
// is usually not a good practice so use this with caution.

Note: since 1.2.0, you can simply console.log(jsonifyError(anything)) if you prefer, because if anything is not an error, jsonifyError will not touch it at all.

Contributing

Any contribution is very welcome. Feel free to open an issue about anything: questions, suggestions, feature requests, bugs, improvements, mistakes, whatever. I will be always looking.

Changelog

The changelog is available in CHANGELOG.md.

License

MIT (c) Pedro Augusto de Paula Barbosa

Changelog

[1.2.2] - 2018-08-13

Changed

• The browser field in package.json no longer points to a browserified bundle (#4)
• Fixed wrong SRI hash in README