sindresorhus/electron-store

Add error hook option

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#86 opened on Sep 25, 2019

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enhancementhelp wanted

Description

I was playing with migrations and noticed some weird behavior. So to be able to run specific migrations I modified the store file by hand. No matter what I did, I always ended up completely empty store data. In the end, revealed that my JSON file was slightly invalid (because of my modifications), e.g.:

{"foo":"bar",}

notice the extra ,

This causes the fact that when I create the store instance, the data parsing fails and store data is empty. As a side effect, I lose all my data in the json file.

I know editing these files by hand is something people should not really do, but just silently ignoring the parsing error and emptying the file is just super bad IMHO.

IMO better to fail the instantiation if the file is not parseable and not to wipe all the data.

Contributor guide

Tech stack
javascriptnodejselectron
Domain
datadesktopdeveloper experience
Issue type
feature
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
3
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
half day
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
stale
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
clear
Prerequisites
Basic JavaScriptFamiliarity with Electron Store API
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
60
Research direction
The issue requests adding an error hook option to the electron store constructor to handle JSON parsing failures gracefully instead of silently wiping data. Look at the store constructor in index.js, specifically the part that reads and parses the JSON file. The existing behavior quietly catches errors and resets the store. A new option could be added to allow users to provide a custom error handler. The current code likely uses JSON.parse() inside a try catch where errors are ignored. Implement an optional errorHook callback that receives the error and can decide to throw or handle. Also ensure that the default behavior remains backward compatible. See comments in the issue for any further discussion.