How to Extend the JavaScript Error Constructor?

To throw errors in our JavaScript apps, we usually through an object that’s the instance of the Error constructor.

In this article, we’ll look at how to extend the JavaScript Error constructor with our own constructor.

Create Our Own Constructor Function

One way to extend the built-in Error constructor is to create our own constructor that gets data from the Error constructor.

For instance, we can write:

function MyError(message) {
  this.name = 'MyError';
  this.message = message;
  this.stack = (new Error()).stack;
}
MyError.prototype = new Error();
throw new MyError('error occurred')

We create the MyError constructor that takes the message parameter.

We set message as the value of the message property.

And we get the stack trace from the stack property of the Error instance.

We set MyError.prototype to a new Error instance so that a MyError instance is also an Error instance.

In the constructor, we set the name which will be logged when an error is thrown.

Then we throw a MyError instance with the throw keyword.

Once the error, is thrown, we should see it in the log.

And if we log myError instanceof Error and myError instanceof MyError , we should see that both are true since we set MyError.prototype to a new Error instance.

Use the Class Syntax and extends Keyword to extend the Error Constructor

The class syntax is added to ES6 so that we can create constructors that inherit constructors easily.

However, underneath the syntactic sugar, prototypical inheritance is still used as we have in the previous example.

To extend the Error constructor, we write:

class MyError extends Error {
  constructor(message) {
    super(message);
    this.name = 'MyError';
  }
}

const myError = new MyError('error occurred')
console.log(myError instanceof Error)
console.log(myError instanceof MyError)
throw myError

We create the MyError class with the extends keyword to create a subclass of the Error class.

The constructor takes the message parameter and we pass that into the Error constructor by calling super .

We also set our own name property in the constructor.

And then we instantiate the MyError class the same way as before.

And if we use the instanceof operator on Error and MyError , we see that they’re both true .

When we throw an error, we see the message as we did before.

Conclusion

We can use regular prototypical inheritance or the class syntax to create our own constructor that inherits data from the Error constructor.