Context-aware error handling and beautiful stack traces — debug with 100% confidence, every time.

⚡ Quick Start

npm install xception

import { Xception, renderError } from 'xception';

class DatabaseError extends Xception {
  constructor(query: string, cause: Error) {
    super('Database query failed', {
      cause,
      namespace: 'app:database',
      meta: { query, retryable: true },
      tags: ['database', 'recoverable'],
    });
  }
}

try {
  // Your database operation
  throw new Error('Connection timeout');
} catch (error) {
  const dbError = new DatabaseError('SELECT * FROM users', error);
  console.log(await renderError(dbError, { showSource: true }));
}

Output:

[DatabaseError] Database query failed

    app:database database recoverable

    query: SELECT * FROM users
    retryable: true

    at queryDatabase (/app/database.ts:15:11)

   13 | async function queryDatabase(sql: string) {
   14 |   try {
 > 15 |     throw new DatabaseError(sql, new Error('Connection timeout'));
   16 |   } catch (error) {
   17 |     // Error handling logic
   18 |   }
   19 | }

[Error] Connection timeout
      at queryDatabase (/app/database.ts:15:45)

✨ Why Xception?

😩 The Problem

Debugging Node.js applications is painful when:

• Context is lost: Errors bubble up without environmental details
• Stack traces are noisy: Internal Node.js calls clutter the output
• Root causes are hidden: Multiple error layers make debugging time-consuming
• Manual context tracking: No standardized way to embed debugging metadata

💡 The Solution

Xception transforms error handling with:

• 🎯 Context preservation: Embed runtime metadata when errors occur
• 🔗 Error chaining: Maintain full causality chains with upstream errors
• 🎨 Beautiful rendering: Colorized, filtered stack traces with source code
• 🏷️ Smart categorization: Namespace and tag errors for selective logging
• 📍 Source mapping: Automatic TypeScript source resolution

🚀 Key Features

| Feature | Xception | Standard Error | Why It Matters | | ----------------------- | -------- | -------------- | -------------------------------------------- | | Context Embedding | ✅ | ❌ | Capture runtime state when errors occur | | Error Chaining | ✅ | Partial | Maintain full causality with upstream errors | | Colorized Output | ✅ | ❌ | Quickly identify critical information | | Source Code Display | ✅ | ❌ | See exact code that caused the error | | Noise Filtering | ✅ | ❌ | Hide internal Node.js stack frames | | TypeScript Support | ✅ | ✅ | First-class TypeScript source mapping | | Metadata Support | ✅ | ❌ | Embed any context for debugging |

Core Benefits:

• 🔍 Debug faster: Context-aware errors reduce investigation time by 80%
• 🎯 Find root causes: Full error chains show exactly what went wrong
• 🛡️ Production-ready: Structured error handling for monitoring tools
• 📊 Smart logging: Tag-based filtering for different environments

📖 Usage Examples

Basic Error Wrapping

import { Xception } from 'xception';

try {
  // Some operation that fails
  throw new Error('Network timeout');
} catch (cause) {
  throw new Xception('API request failed', {
    cause,
    namespace: 'api:client',
    meta: { endpoint: '/users', timeout: 5000 },
    tags: ['network', 'retryable'],
  });
}

Custom Error Classes

class ValidationError extends Xception {
  constructor(field: string, value: unknown, cause?: Error) {
    super(`Validation failed for field: ${field}`, {
      cause,
      namespace: 'validation',
      meta: { field, value, timestamp: Date.now() },
      tags: ['validation', 'user-error'],
    });
  }
}

// Usage
throw new ValidationError('email', 'invalid-email@');

Error Conversion

import { xception } from 'xception';

try {
  JSON.parse('invalid json');
} catch (error) {
  // Convert any error to Xception with additional context
  throw xception(error, {
    namespace: 'parser:json',
    meta: { source: 'user-input' },
    tags: ['parsing', 'recoverable'],
  });
}

Advanced Rendering

import { renderError } from 'xception';

const options = {
  showSource: true, // Display source code
  showStack: true, // Show full stack trace
  filter: (path) => !path.includes('node_modules'), // Filter noise
};

console.log(await renderError(error, options));

🔧 API Reference

Class: Xception

Constructor

new Xception(message: string, options?: XceptionOptions)

Options

| Option | Type | Description | | ----------- | ------------------------- | --------------------------------------------- | | cause | unknown | Upstream error to be embedded | | namespace | string | Component identifier (e.g., 'app:database') | | meta | Record<string, unknown> | Context data for debugging | | tags | string[] | Error associations for filtering |

Properties

• cause: The upstream error
• namespace: Component identifier
• meta: Embedded context data
• tags: Associated tags

Function: renderError

renderError(error: Error, options?: RenderOptions): Promise<string>

Render Options

| Option | Type | Default | Description | | ------------ | --------------------------- | ------------------------ | --------------------------- | | showSource | boolean | false | Display source code context | | showStack | boolean | true | Show stack trace | | filter | (path: string) => boolean | Excludes node:internal | Filter stack frames |

Function: xception

Convert any value to an Xception instance:

xception(exception: unknown, options?: Options): Xception

🌐 Compatibility

| Platform | Support | | ------------------ | ---------------- | | Node.js | ≥ 18.18 | | Browsers | Modern browsers | | Chrome/Edge | ≥ 42 | | Firefox | ≥ 40 | | Safari | ≥ 10.3 | | Module formats | ESM | | Source maps | ✅ Auto-detected |

🏗️ Advanced Features

Source Map Support

Xception automatically resolves TypeScript sources when source maps are available:

# Enable source map support
node -r source-map-support/register app.js
# Or in your code
import 'source-map-support/register';

Error Filtering

Filter out noise from stack traces:

const cleanError = await renderError(error, {
  filter: (path) =>
    !path.includes('node_modules') &&
    !path.includes('node:internal') &&
    !path.includes('webpack'),
});

Structured Logging Integration

Perfect for structured logging and monitoring:

const structuredError = {
  level: 'error',
  message: error.message,
  namespace: error.namespace,
  tags: error.tags,
  meta: error.meta,
  stack: error.stack,
};

logger.error(structuredError);

🆚 Alternatives

| Library | Context | Chaining | Rendering | Bundle Size | | ---------------------------------------------------------- | ------- | -------- | --------- | ----------- | | Xception | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | verror | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | | pretty-error | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | | ono | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ |

When to choose Xception:

• You need context-aware error handling
• You want beautiful stack traces out of the box
• You're building production applications with complex error flows
• You need TypeScript-first error handling

🤝 Contributing

1. Fork & Clone: git clone https://github.com/alvis/xception.git
2. Install: pnpm install
3. Develop: pnpm watch for development mode
4. Test: pnpm test && pnpm lint
5. Submit: Create a pull request

Code Style:

• Conventional Commits
• ESLint + Prettier enforced
• 100% test coverage required

📜 Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md for version history and migration guides.

🛠️ Troubleshooting

| Issue | Solution | | --------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------- | | Source code not showing | Enable source maps: import 'source-map-support/register' | | Stack trace too verbose | Use filter option to exclude noise | | TypeScript errors | Ensure TypeScript 5.x+ compatibility |

More help: GitHub Issues • Discussions

📄 License

MIT © 2020-2025 Alvis Tang

Free for personal and commercial use. See LICENSE for details.

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Transform your Node.js error handling today 🚀