How do I access the response body from an error?

[renato-oc]

I am calling an API that can responds with HTTP code 409 and a response body as below.

{
    "error": {
        "message": "some message",
        "type": "Exception",
        "code": 0
    }
}

I tried calling this api using got as below.

  try {
    const response = await got.put(`my-url-here`, {
        json: payload,
      })
      .json();
  } catch (error) {
    console.log(error);
  }

But the logs doesn't show the body. Is it possible to catch it?

HTTPError: Response code 409 (Conflict)
    at Request.<anonymous> (/my-api/node_modules/got/dist/source/as-promise/index.js:117:42)
    at processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:96:5) {
  code: 'ERR_NON_2XX_3XX_RESPONSE',
  timings: {
    ...
    phases: {
      ...
    }
  }
}

[sindresorhus]

The response, meaning also the body, is attached to the error. It's all in the docs. The response is not visible when logging for practical reasons (the object is huge) and security reasons.

[oles]

Here's how I ended up with a much clearer logged error for my use case:

function improveLoggedGotError(error) {
  // it's rarely needed to see the options used to make a request,
  // and the object is huge and has a lot of unnecessary information
  Object.defineProperty(error, 'options', { enumerable: false });

  // unless you're debugging timings, they're just noise
  Object.defineProperty(error, 'timings', { enumerable: false });

  // this is often exactly what you want to see when logging an error,
  // as it can contain the reason why the request failed
  if (error.response) {
    Object.defineProperty(error, 'response', { enumerable: true });

    // I don't know why the request property is set on the response object
    Object.defineProperty(error.response, 'request', { enumerable: false });

    // removes some internal properties noise from the response object
    Object.defineProperty(error.response, '_events', { enumerable: false });
    Object.defineProperty(error.response, '_readableState', { enumerable: false });
    Object.defineProperty(error.response, '_writableState', { enumerable: false });

    // the rawBody is the body as a buffer, and is rarely needed when logging
    Object.defineProperty(error.response, 'rawBody', { enumerable: false });

    // The statusCode, statusMessage, and headers, are all getters/setters,
    // they're also not writeable, so they can't be changed so their values can be logged,
    // so the best option is to add a non-getter property with the wanted values
    Object.defineProperty(error.response, 'nonGetterValues', {
      value: {
        statusCode: error.response.statusCode,
        statusMessage: error.response.statusMessage,
        headers: error.response.headers,
      },
      enumerable: true,
    });
  }

  return error;
};

Use it like so:

got.get(`https://example.org`, {
  hooks: {
    beforeError: [improveLoggedGotError],
  },
});

✌️

[zulucoda]

A simpler answer 🙂:

try {
    const response = await got.put(`my-url-here`, {
        json: payload,
      })
      .json();
  } catch (error) {
    console.log(error.response.body); // that's where you will get your body text from.
}