how to handle exceptions in a single place in nodejs and express - node.js

Question

In nodejs express to handle exceptions , check for err in callbacks as :
if(err!==null){
next(new Error ('Erro Message'));
}
Which in turn calls the express's error handler middleware .
app.use(function(err, req, res, next){
if(!err) return next();
console.log('<-------Error Occured ----->');
res.send(500, JSON.stringify(err, ['stack', 'message']));
});
But to call invoke next(err) , I'm forced to pass around the reference for next across all the callback methods through all the layers . I find this a messy aproach . Is there a better way to handle exceptions and send a proper response using events or domains .

Answer 1

You should always delegate the error in the routes / controllers to the error handler by calling next (so you can just deal with them in one place instead of having them scattered throughout your application).
Here's an example:
app.get('/', function(req, res, next) {
db.findUser(req.params.userId, function(err, uid) {
if (err) { return next(err); }
/* ... */
});
});
/* Your custom error handler */
app.use(function(err, req, res, next) {
// always log the error here
// send different response based on content type
res.format({
'text/plain': function(){
res.status(500).send('500 - Internal Server Error');
},
'text/html': function(){
res.status(500).send('<h1>Internal Server Error</h1>');
},
'application/json': function(){
res.send({ error: 'internal_error' });
}
});
});
Note: You don't have to check for the err param in the error handler because it will always be present.
Also very important: always do return next(err); because you don't want the success code to be executed.
Both your code samples were flawed: in the first one you didn't use return next(err) and in the second one you have used return next(err), so code that followed shouldn't be handling the error (because it will never get there in case there's an error), but instead it should have been the 'success' code.

Answer 2

The error pages example from Express showsthe canonical way of handling errors:
https://github.com/visionmedia/express/blob/master/examples/error-pages/index.js
// error-handling middleware, take the same form
// as regular middleware, however they require an
// arity of 4, aka the signature (err, req, res, next).
// when connect has an error, it will invoke ONLY error-handling
// middleware.
// If we were to next() here any remaining non-error-handling
// middleware would then be executed, or if we next(err) to
// continue passing the error, only error-handling middleware
// would remain being executed, however here
// we simply respond with an error page.