UNB/ CS/ David Bremner/ teaching/ cs2613/ books/ mdn/ Reference/ Global Objects/ Error

Error objects are thrown when runtime errors occur. The Error object can also be used as a base object for user-defined exceptions. See below for standard built-in error types.

Description

Runtime errors result in new Error objects being created and thrown.

Error is a , so it can be cloned with or copied between Workers using .

Error types

Besides the generic Error constructor, there are other core error constructors in JavaScript. For client-side exceptions, see Exception handling statements.

Constructor

Static methods

Instance properties

These properties are defined on Error.prototype and shared by all Error instances.

These properties are own properties of each Error instance.

Instance methods

Examples

Throwing a generic error

Usually you create an Error object with the intention of raising it using the throw keyword. You can handle the error using the try...catch construct:

try {
  throw new Error("Whoops!");
} catch (e) {
  console.error(`${e.name}: ${e.message}`);
}

Handling a specific error type

You can choose to handle only specific error types by testing the error type with the instanceof keyword:

try {
  foo.bar();
} catch (e) {
  if (e instanceof EvalError) {
    console.error(`${e.name}: ${e.message}`);
  } else if (e instanceof RangeError) {
    console.error(`${e.name}: ${e.message}`);
  }
  // etc.
  else {
    // If none of our cases matched leave the Error unhandled
    throw e;
  }
}

Differentiate between similar errors

Sometimes a block of code can fail for reasons that require different handling, but which throw very similar errors (i.e. with the same type and message).

If you don't have control over the original errors that are thrown, one option is to catch them and throw new Error objects that have more specific messages. The original error should be passed to the new Error in the constructor's options parameter as its cause property. This ensures that the original error and stack trace are available to higher-level try/catch blocks.

The example below shows this for two methods that would otherwise fail with similar errors (doFailSomeWay() and doFailAnotherWay()):

function doWork() {
  try {
    doFailSomeWay();
  } catch (err) {
    throw new Error("Failed in some way", { cause: err });
  }
  try {
    doFailAnotherWay();
  } catch (err) {
    throw new Error("Failed in another way", { cause: err });
  }
}

try {
  doWork();
} catch (err) {
  switch (err.message) {
    case "Failed in some way":
      handleFailSomeWay(err.cause);
      break;
    case "Failed in another way":
      handleFailAnotherWay(err.cause);
      break;
  }
}

Note: If you are making a library, you should prefer to use error cause to discriminate between different errors emitted — rather than asking your consumers to parse the error message. See the error cause page for an example.

Custom error types can also use the cause property, provided the subclasses' constructor passes the options parameter when calling super(). The Error() base class constructor will read options.cause and define the cause property on the new error instance.

class MyError extends Error {
  constructor(message, options) {
    // Need to pass `options` as the second parameter to install the "cause" property.
    super(message, options);
  }
}

console.log(new MyError("test", { cause: new Error("cause") }).cause);
// Error: cause

Custom error types

You might want to define your own error types deriving from Error to be able to throw new MyError() and use instanceof MyError to check the kind of error in the exception handler. This results in cleaner and more consistent error handling code.

See "What's a good way to extend Error in JavaScript?" on StackOverflow for an in-depth discussion.

Warning: Builtin subclassing cannot be reliably transpiled to pre-ES6 code, because there's no way to construct the base class with a particular new.target without Reflect.construct. You need additional configuration or manually call Object.setPrototypeOf(this, CustomError.prototype) at the end of the constructor; otherwise, the constructed instance will not be a CustomError instance. See the TypeScript FAQ for more information.

Note: Some browsers include the CustomError constructor in the stack trace when using ES2015 classes.

class CustomError extends Error {
  constructor(foo = "bar", ...params) {
    // Pass remaining arguments (including vendor specific ones) to parent constructor
    super(...params);

    // Maintains proper stack trace for where our error was thrown (only available on V8)
    if (Error.captureStackTrace) {
      Error.captureStackTrace(this, CustomError);
    }

    this.name = "CustomError";
    // Custom debugging information
    this.foo = foo;
    this.date = new Date();
  }
}

try {
  throw new CustomError("baz", "bazMessage");
} catch (e) {
  console.error(e.name); // CustomError
  console.error(e.foo); // baz
  console.error(e.message); // bazMessage
  console.error(e.stack); // stacktrace
}

Specifications

Browser compatibility

See also