Error Handling
Last modified on Tue 18 Jan 2022

Motivation

Handling errors is really important for any production ready app. By proper handling of error we can prevent degradation of user experience in production. Luckily, React gave use the right tool for this job, and it's called Error Boundary

Used modules

  1. SWR (docs)
  2. @bugsnag/plugin-react (docs)

Error handling done right!

const Announcements = ({ eventId }) => {
  const { data, error } = useSWR(`/api/v1/announcements?filter[event_id]=${eventId}`);

  if (error) {
    // Error is handled outside in BugsnagErrorBoundary
    throw error;
  }

  if (!data) {
    // Loading data
    return <AnnouncementsSkeleton />
  }

  return (
    <div>
      {data?.map(announcement) => <AnnouncementCard key={announcement.id} announcement={announcement} />}
    </div>
  );
}

Then in the parent component:

<BugsnagErrorBoundary FallbackComponent={ErrorFallback}>
  <Announcements eventId={eventId} />
</BugsnagErrorBoundary>
// ./src/components/shared/overlays

const ErrorFallback = (error, info, clearError) => {
  return <button onClick={clearError}>Refresh</button>;
};

What do you get with this:

  1. You are only handling a happy path in the component
  2. Reusable error handling for API calls on one place
  3. Error handling for any JS error that could happen in the production
  4. Only this part of the app will stop working, not the whole App
  5. Bugsnag reports

Useful links

  1. Bugsnag with Next.js example
  2. Use react-error-boundary to handle errors in React
  3. If you don't have Bugsnag you can use this npm module react-error-boundary