send-error

Send errors as HTTP bodies, with some opinionated, but sensible defaults and conventions.

Why?

Because errors are important, and I found that having a convention around them helps with making sure that they end up being handled and reported.

How?

var http = require('http')
var sendError = require('send-error')()
var db = require('./db.js')()

function NotFoundError(msg) {
  this.statusCode = 404
  Error.call(this, msg || 'Not found')
}

http.createServer(function(req, res) {
  db.get('foo', function(err, entity) {
    if (err) return sendError(req, res, err)
    if (!entity) return sendError(req, res, new NotFoundError())
    res.writeHead(200, {'content-type': 'application/json'})
    res.end(JSON.stringify(entity))
  })
})

API

SendError(options)

• options - optional
  • options.contentType (String, optional, defaults to 'application/json') - what Content-Type header to use for errors. This might be useful if your service defines its own Content-Type .
  • options.exclude (Array, optional, defaults to [])- which error properties to exlude from the stringified error.
  • options.includeStack (Boolean)- whether to include stack trace. As including the stack trace in the error is a potential security risk (also, users of your API rarely care about it and you should be reporting it somewhere yourself), this option defaults to false.
  • onerror (Function(http.IncomingMessage, http.ServerResponse, Error), optional) - a function to call when the function returned by the constructor is called. When called, it's passed the request, response and error.

sendError(req, res, error)

Returned by the SendError constructor.

• req (http.IncomingMessage)
• req (http.ServerResponse)\
• err (Error) - error you want to be sent