I'm going to add an answer here even though you've already accepted another one because I think what's going on here can be explained better and this will help others attempting to understand this.
In your code here:
router.get('/force_async_error/1', async function (req, res, next) {
await Promise.reject(new Error('my zoom 1'));
});
Let's discuss what is going on:
First, you declared the callback as async which you had to do in order to use await in it. An async function tells the interpreter to do several important things.
1. An async function always returns a promise. The resolved value of the promise will be whatever the function returns.
2. An async function is internally wrapped with a try/catch. If any exceptions are thrown in the top level scope of the function code, then those exceptions will be caught and will automatically reject the promise that the function returns.
3. An async function allows you to use await. This is an indicator to the interpreter that it should implement and allow the await syntax inside the function. This is tied to the previous two points above which is why you can't use await in just any 'ol function. Any uncaught rejections from await will also reject the promise that the function returns.
It's important to understand that while the async/await syntax allows you to kind of program with exceptions and try/catch like synchronous code, it isn't exactly the same thing. The function is still returning a promise immediately and uncaught exceptions in the function cause that promise to get rejected at some time later. They don't cause a synchronous exception to bubble up to the caller. So, the Express try/catch won't see a synchronous exception.
But here, the error will not get trapped by try/catch
I thought Express wrapped all middleware functions with try/catch, so I don't see how it would behave differently?
so why doesn't the try/catch [in Express] there capture the thrown error?
This is for two reasons:
The rejected promise is not a synchronous throw so there's no way for Express to catch it with a try/catch. The function just returns a rejected promise.
Express is not looking at the return value of the route handler callback at all (you can see that in the Express code you show). So, the fact that your async function returns a promise which is later rejected is just completely ignored by Express. It just does this fn(req, res, next); and does not pay attention to the returned promise. Thus the rejection of the promise falls on deaf ears.
There is a somewhat Express-like framework called Koa that uses promises a lot and does pay attention to returned promises and which would see your rejected promise. But, that's not what Express does.
If you wanted some Koa-type functionality in Express, you could implement it yourself. In order to leave other functionality undisturbed so it can work normally, I'll implement a new method called getAsync that does use promises:
router.getAsync = function(...args) {
let fn = args.pop();
// replace route with our own route wrapper
args.push(function(req, res, next) {
let p = fn(req, res, next);
// if it looks like a promise was returned here
if (p && typeof p.catch === "function") {
p.catch(err => {
next(err);
});
}
});
return router.get(...args);
}
You could then do this:
router.getAsync('/force_async_error/1', async function (req, res, next) {
await Promise.reject(new Error('my zoom 1'));
});
And, it would properly call next(err) with your error.
Or, your code could even just be this:
router.getAsync('/force_async_error/1', function (req, res, next) {
return Promise.reject(new Error('my zoom 1'));
});
P.S. In a full implementation, you'd probably make async versions of a bunch of the verbs and you'd implement it for middleware and you'd put it on the router prototype. But, this example is to show you how that could work, not to do a full implementation here.
fn(req, res, next)without an await keyword. In Asp.Net, async or not, a top-level catch block catches everything, but in NodeJS, your app is just let to die. – Neoma