Enforce Callback Error Handling (handle-callback-err)

In Node.js, a common pattern for dealing with asynchronous behavior is called the callback pattern. This pattern expects an Error object or null as the first argument of the callback. Forgetting to handle these errors can lead to some really strange behavior in your application.

function loadData (err, data) {
    doSomething(); // forgot to handle error
}

Rule Details

This rule expects that when you're using the callback pattern in Node.js you'll handle the error.

Options

The rule takes a single string option: the name of the error parameter. The default is "err".

Examples of incorrect code for this rule with the default "err" parameter name:

/*eslint handle-callback-err: "error"*/

function loadData (err, data) {
    doSomething();
}

Examples of correct code for this rule with the default "err" parameter name:

/*eslint handle-callback-err: "error"*/

function loadData (err, data) {
    if (err) {
        console.log(err.stack);
    }
    doSomething();
}

function generateError (err) {
    if (err) {}
}

Examples of correct code for this rule with a sample "error" parameter name:

/*eslint handle-callback-err: ["error", "error"]*/

function loadData (error, data) {
    if (error) {
       console.log(error.stack);
    }
    doSomething();
}

regular expression

Sometimes (especially in big projects) the name of the error variable is not consistent across the project, so you need a more flexible configuration to ensure that the rule reports all unhandled errors.

If the configured name of the error variable begins with a ^ it is considered to be a regexp pattern.

• If the option is "^(err|error|anySpecificError)$", the rule reports unhandled errors where the parameter name can be err, error or anySpecificError.
• If the option is "^.+Error$", the rule reports unhandled errors where the parameter name ends with Error (for example, connectionError or validationError will match).
• If the option is "^.*(e|E)rr", the rule reports unhandled errors where the parameter name matches any string that contains err or Err (for example, err, error, anyError, some_err will match).

When Not To Use It

There are cases where it may be safe for your application to ignore errors, however only ignore errors if you are confident that some other form of monitoring will help you catch the problem.

Further Reading

• The Art Of Node: Callbacks
• Nodejitsu: What are the error conventions? Source: http://eslint.org/docs/rules/

Disallow process.exit() (no-process-exit)

The process.exit() method in Node.js is used to immediately stop the Node.js process and exit. This is a dangerous operation because it can occur in any method at any point in time, potentially stopping a Node.js application completely when an error occurs. For example:

if (somethingBadHappened) {
    console.error("Something bad happened!");
    process.exit(1);
}

This code could appear in any module and will stop the entire application when somethingBadHappened is truthy. This doesn't give the application any chance to respond to the error. It's usually better to throw an error and allow the application to handle it appropriately:

if (somethingBadHappened) {
    throw new Error("Something bad happened!");
}

By throwing an error in this way, other parts of the application have an opportunity to handle the error rather than stopping the application altogether. If the error bubbles all the way up to the process without being handled, then the process will exit and a non-zero exit code will returned, so the end result is the same.

Rule Details

This rule aims to prevent the use of process.exit() in Node.js JavaScript. As such, it warns whenever process.exit() is found in code.

Examples of incorrect code for this rule:

/*eslint no-process-exit: "error"*/

process.exit(1);
process.exit(0);

Examples of correct code for this rule:

/*eslint no-process-exit: "error"*/

Process.exit();
var exit = process.exit;

When Not To Use It

There may be a part of a Node.js application that is responsible for determining the correct exit code to return upon exiting. In that case, you should turn this rule off to allow proper handling of the exit code. Source: http://eslint.org/docs/rules/

Duplicated Code

Duplicated code can lead to software that is hard to understand and difficult to change. The Don't Repeat Yourself (DRY) principle states:

Every piece of knowledge must have a single, unambiguous, authoritative representation within a system.

When you violate DRY, bugs and maintenance problems are sure to follow. Duplicated code has a tendency to both continue to replicate and also to diverge (leaving bugs as two similar implementations differ in subtle ways).

Tuning

This issue has a mass of 58.

We set useful threshold defaults for the languages we support but you may want to adjust these settings based on your project guidelines.

The threshold configuration represents the minimum mass a code block must have to be analyzed for duplication. The lower the threshold, the more fine-grained the comparison.

If the engine is too easily reporting duplication, try raising the threshold. If you suspect that the engine isn't catching enough duplication, try lowering the threshold. The best setting tends to differ from language to language.

See codeclimate-duplication's documentation for more information about tuning the mass threshold in your .codeclimate.yml.

Refactorings

• Extract Method
• Extract Class
• Form Template Method
• Introduce Null Object
• Pull Up Method
• Pull Up Field
• Substitute Algorithm

Further Reading

• Don't Repeat Yourself on the C2 Wiki
• Duplicated Code on SourceMaking
• Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler. Duplicated Code, p76