How to properly log erros in my application using ExpressJS - node.js

Question

I am part of a project which uses nodeJS + ExpressJS for the backend application, and We have a middleware function to log accesses on routes in the database.
When an User tries to access the /user route with a post method, a middleware receives the Request, get information like the URL, ip address, origin, a description of the event and record it in the database.
Everything works just fine, but some of my teammates were discussing about how to log the erros also in the database.
I will put bellow a code example
const create = (request, response) => {
try {
const user = request.body;
const userExists = await usersRepository.findOne({ where: { email } });
if(userExists) {
return response.status.json({ error: 'E-mail already in use' });
}
const creadtedUser = await usersRepository.create(user);
return response.status(200).json({ user: creadtedUser });
} catch (error) {
response.status(500).json({ error });
}
};
When we were discussing about how to implement it, we realized we'd have to call a log error function in a lot of places since we have many flows which leads to an error response.
So the code would be just like:
const create = (request, response) => {
try {
const user = request.body;
const userExists = await usersRepository.findOne({ where: { email } });
if(userExists) {
function() // here we would log the error
return response.status.json({ error: 'E-mail already in use' });
}
const creadtedUser = await usersRepository.create(user);
return response.status(200).json({ user: creadtedUser });
} catch (error) {
function() // here we would log the error
response.status(500).json({ error });
}
};
is it a properly way of dealing with error logging or is there any better way of doing it? Thank you for reading!

Answer 1

You can use the built-in error handler provided by Express.JS for this kind of logic, of course it requires a bit of setup. Like most things in Express.JS, the error handler it's just a middleware function with four parameters err, req, res and next, which MUST be placed after all your other middlewares. It comes to play when, inside a router handle (for example), your call next(err) (where err it's an Error) or by simply throwing err. Check out the documentation for more.
app.use(...)
app.use(...)
app.use((req, res, next) => {
if (req.params.id === undefined) {
let error = new Error("ID required.")
error.statusCode = 400
error.statusMessage = "Request not valid, ID not found."
throw error;
} else {
// Do some stuff...
}
})
// NOTE: After ALL your other middlewares
app.use((err, req, res, next) => {
console.error(err)
res
.status(err.statusCode)
.json(err.statusMessage)
})

Answer 2

Ideally you should log the errors only inside the catch block. Whenever you encounter an error just throw a new error by calling throw new Error("Type your error message here"). Then your function inside catch block will log and handle the error appropriately.
I would change your code to this:
const create = (request, response) => {
try {
const user = request.body;
const userExists = await usersRepository.findOne({ where: { email } });
if(userExists) {
throw new Error("E-mail already in use")
}
const creadtedUser = await usersRepository.create(user);
return response.status(200).json({ user: creadtedUser });
} catch (error) {
function() // log your error
response.status(500).json({ error.message });
}
};
Read more about Errors here.