[experimental] [object Object] in error context (websocket failed to connect)

[mcintyre94]

Overview

• I created an rpcSubscriptions object with a ws:// URL instead of wss:// by mistake
• When I tried to use it, I got an error thrown
• When I decode it, it includes "errorEvent": "[object Object]" in the context
• I'm not sure if we have other cases where we're stringifying objects like this

Steps to reproduce

import { createSolanaRpc, createSolanaRpcSubscriptions } from '@solana/web3.js';
import { createRecentSignatureConfirmationPromiseFactory } from '@solana/transaction-confirmation';

const rpc = createSolanaRpc('https://api.devnet.solana.com');

const rpcSubscriptions = createSolanaRpcSubscriptions(
  'ws://api.devnet.solana.com' // bad url, should be wss://
);

const getRecentSignatureConfirmationPromise =
  createRecentSignatureConfirmationPromiseFactory({
    rpc,
    rpcSubscriptions,
  });

await getRecentSignatureConfirmationPromise({
  signature:
    '4W8HheCp1QGFVXXT3skxpZazjo9ajyFyAFfLSJaLKdmJqjFYJweKU5Agzyf9rRyDBBKGRSdanocmsJrUsamYUotT',
  commitment: 'confirmed',
  abortSignal: new AbortController().signal,
});

Run this, and you get:

Error: Solana error #8190004; Decode this error by running `npx @solana/errors decode -- 8190004 'ZXJyb3JFdmVudD0lNUJvYmplY3QlMjBPYmplY3QlNUQ='`

Run the npx @solana/errors command and you get:

[Decoded] Solana error code #8190004
    - WebSocket failed to connect

[Context]
    {
        "errorEvent": "[object Object]"
    }

Stackblitz repro

Description of bug

In this case the error name is clear enough to know what went wrong. But flagging because we might have other cases where we're putting objects in context and they're not getting stringified to anything useful.

[steveluscher]

Yeah, this is generally a ‘flaw,’ in big quotation marks. I didn't program in a way to exclude context properties from the serializer. They're not used in the message, so they're harmless, but it creates mental overhead – the kind that made you file this issue.

One reason that I didn't do this is that it would rely on a blocklist that would have to be built into the production error serializer. We'd be forcing people to download that blocklist, and it would include every error in existence, whether you can even hit them or not. We already ship a god awful allowlist of stuff to patch around deficiencies in the RPC, we don't want to do it here too.

[steveluscher]

I think the best we could do here is something like this:

new SolanaError(CODE, {
  foo: 'bar',
  __hideThisFromTheMessageFormatter: {
    baz: 'bat',
  },
})

…and then have the code merge __hideThisFromTheMessageFormatter into e.context, but otherwise not pass it to the message formatter.

[mcintyre94]

Got it, and I guess we want to pass the object so that if someone catches the error they can access it programatically. I doubt this is worth changing, I'll close it for now.

[github-actions]

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