Errors reading the session-data-default.js file get hidden

[edwardhorsford]

Several times I've been tripped up by having an mistake in my session-data-default.js that means it doesn't read, but not realising.

When the kit reads session-data-default.js it does throw an error if it can't read it - but this error is immediately hidden by some other lines. I tend to look to the end of my console to see if I have problems - since the error isn't there, I don't see it.

Example with an error:

Since the kit keeps working - if you browse a few pages the original error message quickly scrolls out of view.

I wonder if we can do anything about this? stop the kit if there's an error rather than continuing?

[joelanman]

Agree this might better to crash on. process.exit(1) might do it here:

govuk-prototype-kit/lib/utils.js

Line 267 in 2542c17

console.error('Could not load the session data defaults from app/data/session-data-defaults.js. Might be a syntax error?')

Though I recall process.exit doesn't always work for us for some reason (for example if you say no to 'do you want a different port?')

[edwardhorsford]

A followup to this - it would be really handy if the errors could be shown in the console output like normal js errors do. Even if you spot the above message, debugging what's gone wrong is really hard because no details are given - and you can't use console.log() to print anything to the console from this file.

[joelanman]

you can try adding e to the log on this line

https://github.com/alphagov/govuk-prototype-kit/blob/master/lib/utils.js#L229