Is it not possible to stringify an Error using JSON.stringify?

Question

Reproducing the problem

I\'m running into an issue when trying to pass error messages around using web sockets. I can replicate the issue I am facing using J

Answer 1

None of the answers above seemed to properly serialize properties which are on the prototype of Error (because getOwnPropertyNames() does not include inherited properties). I was also not able to redefine the properties like one of the answers suggested.

This is the solution I came up with - it uses lodash but you could replace lodash with generic versions of those functions.

 function recursivePropertyFinder(obj){
    if( obj === Object.prototype){
        return {};
    }else{
        return _.reduce(Object.getOwnPropertyNames(obj), 
            function copy(result, value, key) {
                if( !_.isFunction(obj[value])){
                    if( _.isObject(obj[value])){
                        result[value] = recursivePropertyFinder(obj[value]);
                    }else{
                        result[value] = obj[value];
                    }
                }
                return result;
            }, recursivePropertyFinder(Object.getPrototypeOf(obj)));
    }
}


Error.prototype.toJSON = function(){
    return recursivePropertyFinder(this);
}

Here's the test I did in Chrome:

var myError = Error('hello');
myError.causedBy = Error('error2');
myError.causedBy.causedBy = Error('error3');
myError.causedBy.causedBy.displayed = true;
JSON.stringify(myError);

{"name":"Error","message":"hello","stack":"Error: hello\n    at :66:15","causedBy":{"name":"Error","message":"error2","stack":"Error: error2\n    at :67:20","causedBy":{"name":"Error","message":"error3","stack":"Error: error3\n    at :68:29","displayed":true}}}