reador23•13mo ago

Express + tRPC: handle express errors from client

I currently have Express as backend and react on frontend. I want to migrate gradually to tRPC + react query. In order to do that I want to use the tRPC express middleware. I have tons of express middleware that I want to continue using for now, as well as error handlers. The problem is that the tRPC client (trpc react query) does not recognize express errors like custom session timeout, 401, etc, which is normal, so I get the "Unable to transform response from server". But I would like to know if there is an easy way to format express errors easily to tRPC errors, or if its possible to catch the error before tRPC client tries to transform it, so that I can handle it myself.

11 Replies

Alex / KATT 🐱•13mo ago

You could potentially do a custom link that reformats error I think you have access to the response object there

reador23•13mo ago

Thats a good idea, I already have a custom link but when I log the error from there its already the tRPC error "Unable to transform response from server". Maybe I'm not doing it right, do you have an example of implementation ?

Alex / KATT 🐱•13mo ago

working on it

Alex / KATT 🐱•13mo ago

had to add support for it https://github.com/trpc/trpc/pull/4597

GitHub

feat(client): add HTTP response object to TRPCClientError meta ...

🎯 Changes Allows you to access: error.meta?.response error.meta?.responseJSON In for instance links etc

Alex / KATT 🐱•13mo ago

released to 10.34.0 now you should be able to do custom stuff with that based on err.meta.responseJSON

reador23•13mo ago

Wow! Incredible support! Thank you so much, I will give it a try

Alex / KATT 🐱•13mo ago

Feel free to get your employer to sponsor 😄

reador23•13mo ago

Ah I wish…, but my company in japan would probably laugh to my face for asking this. For now I’m trying to sell the idea of tRPC to my managers. So still working on a PoC. Maybe if one day tRPC becomes a huge part of my company tech stack Your fix indeed works as expected, I’m still having trouble on how to do error handling depending on this response, but I think it’s because I’m new to this concept of link and how it works, like how to throw a new error.

Alex / KATT 🐱•13mo ago

you can probably do something like this to add extra metadata to it:

class MyCustomError extends TRPCClientError<AppRouter> {
  constructor(message: string) {
    super(message);
  }
}

function isObject(value: unknown): value is Record<string, unknown> {
  // check that value is object
  return !!value && !Array.isArray(value) && typeof value === 'object';
}

const customErrorLink: TRPCLink<AppRouter> = (runtime) => (opts) =>
  observable((observer) => {
    const unsubscribe = opts.next(opts.op).subscribe({
      error(err) {
        if (
          err.meta &&
          isObject(err.meta.responseJSON) &&
          '__error' in err.meta.responseJSON
        ) {
          // custom error handling
          observer.error(
            new MyCustomError(
              `custom error: ${JSON.stringify(
                err.meta.responseJSON.__error,
              )}`,
            ),
          );
        }
        observer.error(err);
      },
    });
    return unsubscribe;
  });

class MyCustomError extends TRPCClientError<AppRouter> {
  constructor(message: string) {
    super(message);
  }
}

function isObject(value: unknown): value is Record<string, unknown> {
  // check that value is object
  return !!value && !Array.isArray(value) && typeof value === 'object';
}

const customErrorLink: TRPCLink<AppRouter> = (runtime) => (opts) =>
  observable((observer) => {
    const unsubscribe = opts.next(opts.op).subscribe({
      error(err) {
        if (
          err.meta &&
          isObject(err.meta.responseJSON) &&
          '__error' in err.meta.responseJSON
        ) {
          // custom error handling
          observer.error(
            new MyCustomError(
              `custom error: ${JSON.stringify(
                err.meta.responseJSON.__error,
              )}`,
            ),
          );
        }
        observer.error(err);
      },
    });
    return unsubscribe;
  });

Alex / KATT 🐱•13mo ago

did an example here https://github.com/trpc/trpc/pull/4602/files

GitHub

chore: add custom error handling link example by KATT · Pull Reques...

reador23•13mo ago

Oh thanks! I actually did something kind of similar, I will show you on Monday when I get back to work. It would be nice if it can help people in the future. I think its really important for people that want to migrate their big applications to tRPC as they want to be able to keep using their current code (in our case here its the error handling) and have time to gradually migrate. Maybe if I successfully do it, I could write an article or something on how I migrated a big production Express + SSR React app to tRPC.