JavaScript developers, there’s a new way to handle errors without relying on messy, repetitive try-catch blocks. Meet the Safe Assignment Operator (?=), an upcoming feature that promises to make error handling in JavaScript simpler, cleaner, and easier to manage. Let’s break down how it works and why it’s worth using.
The Problem with Try-Catch Blocks
Traditionally, JavaScript uses try-catch blocks to handle errors, especially in functions that involve async operations. But when you have multiple layers of try-catch, the code quickly becomes complex, hard to read, and harder to maintain.
The Solution: The ?= Operator
The new ?= operator provides a simple and effective alternative. Instead of writing separate try-catch blocks for each error, ?= lets you handle errors directly in one line. This keeps your code cleaner and easier to read.
Here’s how the ?= operator works:
- It returns a pair of values: [error, result].
- If an error happens, the first value is the error, and the second is null.
- If there’s no error, the first value is null, and the second value is the result.
Let’s see how it simplifies our earlier example:
In this version, both network errors and JSON parsing errors are handled in a single line. There’s no need for nested try-catch blocks, making the code cleaner and more direct.
Why ?= is a Game-Changer for JavaScript
- Cleaner Code: With ?=, you can handle multiple potential errors in a single line, without using extra try-catch blocks.
- Centralized Error Handling: Instead of spreading error-handling code across different parts of your function, you keep everything together, making it easier to read.
- Better Performance: With fewer try-catch layers, the code runs more efficiently.
- Easy Async Handling: For async functions, the ?= operator lets you handle errors more simply without sacrificing functionality, especially helpful for APIs and web applications.
- Before and After: A Side-by-Side Comparison
To see the difference, let’s compare the old way of error handling to the new approach.
Old Way (with try-catch):
New Way (with ?=):
See how much simpler the second version is? It’s easy to read and removes redundant code.
Looking Ahead: The Future of Error Handling in JavaScript
The ?= operator isn’t just a minor change—it represents a new, simplified approach to error handling in JavaScript. As JavaScript continues to evolve, tools like this help make it a more powerful, modern language for building web and server applications.
If you’re tired of cluttered try-catch blocks, give ?= a try when it’s available. It’s a straightforward tool that can make your code cleaner and your error handling much easier.
Top comments (80)
This operator is a very long way from becoming part of the language, if it ever does. It's from a DRAFT proposal that hasn't even been accepted for consideration yet, let alone inclusion.
Articles like this always seem to gloss over this point which is really annoying.
I just wish that people stop using stop doing/using [placeholder].
Totally agreed. Just because there is a new alternative that is applicable in some use cases doesn't mean everyone should abandon the status quo.
That's modern React in a nutshell
Modern react is an oxymoron. React is a framework that is permanently stuck in some sort of dystopian alternate history universe
Calling React a framework is like comparing a cat to a mouse. If you can't figure out that much, why even try to make any other comparison's.
From the creators of "you're doing [placeholder] wrong" and "[placeholder-1] will change [placeholder-2] forever", Clickbaity studios! 🤣
It's one of the reasons I deleted my Medium account and now it's permiating here too.
Stop telling us what totally normal and absolutely fine thing is bad.
Maximally agree. I search for "Stop Using on this site, and got 50+ hits.
Why? You mean like for the returning another error or something? Not sure why that's a problem, honest question, just curious what you're thinking?
No, OP commenter meant to not use such phrase for clickbait article title
The second example is somewhat confusing to read. The Try/Catch syntax is very intuitive. 👍🏼
great article! for anyone wanting to try a similar approach to the
?=operator now, i created safe-wrapper to handle errors gracefully. inspired by the safe assignment operator proposal,safe-wrapperreturns a tuple[error, result]for both synchronous and asynchronous functions, reducingtry-catchblocks.it also includes
type-specific error catching, allowing you to specify which error types to handle, throwing any unexpected types, for precise error management.check out the npm package and give it a try!
Thanks for sharing
Clearly the efforts made towards "centralizing" the error handling code makes it more complex and less intuitive than the try..catch version. While I see some value in this potential new operator, I don't think it is such a game changer.
I do not, and never will, use nested try catch within a function. I almost never use it serially unless there is a massive reason such as immediate recoverability from the error, or state rollback, or a darn good logical reason, which is almost never.
I can count on two hands the number of patterns I've violated this rule with in JavaScript, Java, C++ and other languages in the last 35 years.
The reason you need solutions like this is you're writing bad code to begin with and have poor error handling design.
You could give a library like TS Results or Never Throw a try which gives additional tooling and abstractions that provides some quality of life & niceties, which can be used right now.
Given that this is not currently implemented for LTS I would recommend an abstraction like a library which could later utilize this method under the hood if/when it makes sense.
What? This looks identical to a post that I saw on dev.to a few months ago - why and how is this being "recycled"? Besides, this isn't even an accepted proposal, let alone it's implemented in JS already, so it's misleading to say "stop doing this or that" when the alternative doesn't even work ...
Besides, people should stop writing article titles like "STOP using this ..." or "you MUST do that ..." - we're not toddlers, we can make our own decisions and trade-offs, rather than being patronized or being told what we "must" do (even more so when the actual information is inaccurate or misleading) ...
How and why did this article make it to the top of my "dev.to" feed? Pretty useless ...
My take on this is that most code has to many try catches anyway. The example above could have been just one try catch
The file successfully loaded or not. The reason why it failed, a file load failure or parsing becomes clear from the error stack trace.
On the safe assignment operator itself. I kind a like it but not convinced it is a game changer
How is this better? Proper use of try catch results in clean code because you have zero error handling in your main code - it’s all at the bottom making the happy flow easier to read. Your example is just bad try catch usage and one can easily imagine bad usage of the new operator where you end up with an if after every command - the whole reason exceptions were invented.