Handling of unexpected server responses

[MJochim]

Opening a new issue as a copy of my comment on #11. Unexpected server responses (such as a 401/Not authorized; or if the specified server is not a Gitlab instance) may lead to obscure error messages.

Steps to reproduce

1. git clone, npm i, cp sample_settings.json settings.json
2. Replace the value of gitlab.url in settings.json (use e.g. https://gitlab.lrz.de/ or http://www.google.de/)
3. node index.js

Result

If you use an actual gitlab instance in step 2, you get the message described in #11 (“Unexpected token o in JSON at position 1”).
If you use some other URL (e.g. Google), you get a different message.

Comment

This needs fixing in the gitlab package and has actually been documented at jdalrymple/gitbeaker#149.

However some changes in this codebase might also be in order. Try making the change I suggested upstream, repeat the steps to reproduce and you will end up with another error:

TypeError: projects.sort is not a function

Something like Array.isArray(projects) inside the callback function on line 16 might do the trick.

[MJochim]

Addendum: After applying the suggested patch to the gitlab package, if I choose google.de as my gitlab.url, there is no error message. The projects variable is an empty array, which the code can handle. This at least is no crash :-).

It would of course be great if we could determine whether the specified server is really a Gitlab server and if not, warn the user (they have leaked their Gitlab access token to a foreign server, after all). But I don’t know if that is possible or feasible.

[spruce]

What would you recommend to do? maybe manually request the gitlab url and check whether gitlab returns some header.

As I see it currently I will wait for a change in the upstream module. Otherwise I can't do anything. IMO.

[spruce]

As of now the error is printed on the console which should contain the body where this should get clearer. I gonna close this because I think it is now stated clearly enough. Reopen if you think otherwise. 👍