Skip to content

Instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

@justmoon
Forked from subfuzion/error.md
Last active June 26, 2024 09:36
Show Gist options
  • Save justmoon/15511f92e5216fa2624b to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.
Save justmoon/15511f92e5216fa2624b to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.
Creating custom Error classes in Node.js
'use strict';
module.exports = function CustomError(message, extra) {
Error.captureStackTrace(this, this.constructor);
this.name = this.constructor.name;
this.message = message;
this.extra = extra;
};
require('util').inherits(module.exports, Error);

It's nice to be able to distinguish error types by classes. But it's a bit tricky to correctly create a custom error class in Node.js, so here is an example.

The example also shows how to add an extra parameter called extra that will be stored as a property on the error.

Usage

var CustomError = require('./errors/custom-error');

function doSomethingBad() {
  throw new CustomError('It went bad!', 42);
}

Features

  • Name appears once - less editing if you have to create lots of custom error classes
  • Easy to subclass - just change the last line to inherit from another custom error class you created
  • Correct stack trace - no extra stack frames, no double capturing of the stack trace

Anti-patterns

These are some things that I've seen in other proposed solutions that you should avoid.

  • Error.call(this) - creates another error object (wasting a bunch of time) and doesn't touch this at all
  • Error.captureStackTrace(this, arguments.callee); - works, but arguments.callee is deprecated, so don't use it
  • this.stack = (new Error).stack - this... I don't even...
// Mini test suite for our custom error
var assert = require('assert');
var CustomError = require('./errors/custom-error');
function doSomethingBad() {
throw new CustomError('It went bad!', 42);
}
try {
doSomethingBad();
} catch (err) {
// The name property should be set to the error's name
assert(err.name = 'CustomError');
// The error should be an instance of its class
assert(err instanceof CustomError);
// The error should be an instance of builtin Error
assert(err instanceof Error);
// The error should be recognized by Node.js' util#isError
assert(require('util').isError(err));
// The error should have recorded a stack
assert(err.stack);
// toString should return the default error message formatting
assert.strictEqual(err.toString(),
'CustomError: It went bad!');
// The stack should start with the default error message formatting
assert.strictEqual(err.stack.split('\n')[0],
'CustomError: It went bad!');
// The first stack frame should be the function where the error was thrown.
assert.strictEqual(err.stack.split('\n')[1].indexOf('doSomethingBad'), 7);
// The extra property should have been set
assert.strictEqual(err.extra, 42);
}
// Spoiler: It passes!
@tcf909
Copy link

tcf909 commented Jul 15, 2019

How do you match the string representation of CustomError to that of Error object?

Object.prototype.toString.call(new Error); // '[object Error]'
Object.prototype.toString.call(new CustomError); //  '[object Object]'

You need to define the toStringTag for the CustomError:

Object.defineProperty(CustomError.prototype, Symbol.toStringTag, {
	value: 'Error',
	writable: false, configurable: false, enumerable: false
});

This consequently help with libraries like lodash and it's _.isError().

@hiddentao
Copy link

Thanks for the gist, and thanks to all the commenters for the suggestions.

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment