Question - How to handle errors in production

[danizen]

Description

I really like the solution of #86, but I think my users will still want to see something in the page if an error occurs in the backend. I am thinking of an implementation I've done with jquery and bootstrap modal where the edit dialog appears - if there is a simple form error, they see the errors in the form and the modal doesn't disappear. Currently, if there is an 500-error, the form just disappears in production and they know something is wrong, but not what. I wish I could do better but I am struggling to get the 20k lines of PL/SQL into Python/Django Models/SQL without losing the performance (pity me).

If I were to rewrite this application with HTMX (which I would love to have time to do), how would I do better and show them something in the UI like "System error occurred"?

Obviously, each call can use try/exception block to catch errors and return them, but maybe there should be a Django setting for an error template in production, or maybe I can handle this entirely with some sort of JavaScript handler - but if I do that, am I missing some of the advantages of HTMX?

[adamchainz]

Hi Dan

This is what #43 is intended to cover. I haven't had time to figure out this kind of error handling myself except on a case-by-case basis.

A piece of JS that listens to htmx:responseError and updates the UI accordingly can work well. It isn't that much JS - I would like to document this, but also research in what cases it doesn't work. Using a bit of JS wouldn't lose the advantages of htmx, and you could even use parts of the htmx JS API to update the DOM.

Hope that helps - if I get time I'll try write up an example of this pattern.