Question

I have the following controller/route definition in Node.js (using Express and Mongoose). What would be the leanest most appropriate way to handle Error when the user requests a page that does not exist?

  app.get('/page/:pagetitle', function(req, res) {
      Page.findOne({ title: req.params.pagetitle}, function(error, page) {
          res.render('pages/page_show.ejs',
            { locals: {
                title: 'ClrTouch | ' + page.title,
                page:page
            }
          });
      });
  });

It currently breaks my app. I believe because I’m not doing anything with the error i’m just passing it to the view like a success?

TypeError: Cannot read property 'title' of null

Thanks much.

Answer 1

Check out the express error-pages example. The principle is to register your app routes first, then you register a catch all 404 handler for all other requests that do not map to a route. Finally, a 500 handler is registered, as follows:

// "app.router" positions our routes 
// specifically above the middleware
// assigned below

app.use(app.router);

// Since this is the last non-error-handling
// middleware use()d, we assume 404, as nothing else
// responded.

app.use(function(req, res, next){
  // the status option, or res.statusCode = 404
  // are equivalent, however with the option we
  // get the "status" local available as well
  res.render('404', { status: 404, url: req.url });
});

// 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.


app.use(function(err, req, res, next){
  // we may use properties of the error object
  // here and next(err) appropriately, or if
  // we possibly recovered from the error, simply next().
  res.render('500', {
      status: err.status || 500
    , error: err
  });
});