Error should have a toJSON implementation?

[ORESoftware]

Just playing with some code and discovered that JSON.stringify called against Error instances are empty objects which seems weird since message and stack are string properties? And since errors are usually of interest.

console.log(JSON.stringify(new Error('foo')));  //  {}


class Foo extends Error {
  
  constructor() {
    super(...arguments);
  }
  
  toJSON() {
    return {
      message: this.message,
      stack: this.stack
    }
  }
  
}

console.log(JSON.stringify(new Foo('foo')));   // now we have some output

maybe the Error class should come with a toJSON implementation?

[benjamingr]

Errors are part of JavaScript - or do you mean Node core's internal errors?

[AyushG3112]

Regarding the reason you don't get stack and message in JSON.stringify

Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptors(new Error("test"))

returns

{
  "stack": {
    "value": "Error: test\n    at <anonymous>:1:49",
    "writable": true,
    "enumerable": false,
    "configurable": true
  },
  "message": {
    "value": "test",
    "writable": true,
    "enumerable": false,
    "configurable": true
  }
}

stack and message are non-emunerable, hence not included in JSON.stringify result.

[ORESoftware]

Yeah I figured the fact that they were non-enumerable properties was it. Tell the V8 people I guess, seems weird that you wouldnt want to see error stack/messages in serialized data, although good for security in some cases.

You can close this one - people can extend Error if they really want to serialize them or what not.