node-redis: Error, which is returned from retry_strategy remains uncaught

Any news ? I have the same problem.

I am encountering the same error. If I intentionally provide Redis client a bad URL, the on.error method is not invoked. Here is a simple example:

var redis = require("redis");

exports.handler = function (event, context, callback) {

    console.log("Executing test lambda for diagnosing redis issues");
    
    var redisInfo = {
        HOST: process.env.REDIS_HOST,
        PORT: process.env.REDIS_PORT
    };

    console.log(process.env.REDIS_HOST);
    console.log(process.env.REDIS_PORT);

    console.log("Connecting to Redis...");

    var client = redis.createClient({
        host: redisInfo.HOST,
        port: redisInfo.PORT,
        retry_strategy: function (options) {

            if (options.total_retry_time > 2000) {
                console.log("throwing an error...");
                return new Error('Retry time exhausted');
            }

            return 200;
        }
    });

    // if you'd like to select database 3, instead of 0 (default), call
    // client.select(3, function() { /* ... */ });

    client.on("error", function (err) {
        console.log("Error " + err);
        callback(null, "Error with Redis");
    });

    client.on('connect', function() {
        console.log("Connected to Redis");
    });

    client.on('end', function() {
        console.log("Redis end");
    });

    client.set("string key", "string val", redis.print);
    client.hset("hash key", "hashtest 1", "some value", redis.print);
    client.hset(["hash key", "hashtest 2", "some other value"], redis.print);
    client.hkeys("hash key", function (err, replies) {
        console.log(replies.length + " replies:");
        replies.forEach(function (reply, i) {
            console.log("    " + i + ": " + reply);
        });
        client.quit();
    });
    
    client.quit();

    callback(null, "Success");
};

Same here. This nasty hack seems to create the expected behaviour, but not sure if it has any wider implications:

const client = redis.createClient({
  retry_strategy: ({error}) => client.emit('error', error)
});

client.on('error', console.error);

I too am not able to catch errors when receiving an ENOTFOUND.

{
    host: "foo",
    retry_strategy: function (options) {
        if (options.error && options.error.code === "ENOTFOUND") {
            return new Error("The server was not found");
        }

        // reconnect after
        return 1000;
}

with:

redis.on("error", err => {
    console.error("Cache Error: " + err);
});

Debugging the application, i’m getting into the ENOTFOUND check as noted above in the retry_strategy but it’s not invoking the error event handler.

This caught me out today as well. From looking at the code briefly, this seems to be intentional behaviour. https://github.com/NodeRedis/node_redis/blob/79558c524ff783000a6027fb159739770f98b10e/index.js#L405 explicitly states that if retry_strategy is set, not to emit the error and instead continues to throw it. I’d be curious to hear why this is the case though, there doesn’t seem to be a reason why it can’t emit it instead of throwing from a quick look. Is there any reason this conditional couldn’t be taken out, so that the error will always be emitted?

We switched our implementation to https://github.com/luin/ioredis instead, which brought a few improvements (native Promises, lazyConnect(avoid opening a connection when instanciating the redis client, helped us handle errors exactly where we needed)), and allows the following code to run:

let cachedItem;

  try {
    logger.debug(`Fetching GraphCMS query in redis cache...`);
    // XXX If fetching data from redis fails, we will fall back to running the query against GraphCMS API in order to ensure the client gets the data anyway
    cachedItem = await redisClient.get(body);
  } catch (e) {
    logger.debug(`An exception occurred while fetching redis cache.`);
    logger.error(e);
    epsagon.setError(e);
  }

Using the following utils/redis.js:

import { createLogger } from '@unly/utils-simple-logger';
import Redis from 'ioredis';
import epsagon from './epsagon';

const logger = createLogger({
  label: 'Redis client',
});

/**
 * Creates a redis client
 *
 * @param url Url of the redis client, must contain the port number and be of the form "localhost:6379"
 * @param password Password of the redis client
 * @param maxRetriesPerRequest By default, all pending commands will be flushed with an error every 20 retry attempts.
 *          That makes sure commands won't wait forever when the connection is down.
 *          Set to null to disable this behavior, and every command will wait forever until the connection is alive again.
 * @return {Redis}
 */
export const getClient = (url = process.env.REDIS_URL, password = process.env.REDIS_PASSWORD, maxRetriesPerRequest = 20) => {
  const client = new Redis(`redis://${url}`, {
    password,
    showFriendlyErrorStack: true, // See https://github.com/luin/ioredis#error-handling
    lazyConnect: true, // XXX Don't attempt to connect when initializing the client, in order to properly handle connection failure on a use-case basis
    maxRetriesPerRequest,
  });

  client.on('connect', function () {
    logger.info('Connected to redis instance');
  });

  client.on('ready', function () {
    logger.info('Redis instance is ready (data loaded from disk)');
  });

  // Handles redis connection temporarily going down without app crashing
  // If an error is handled here, then redis will attempt to retry the request based on maxRetriesPerRequest
  client.on('error', function (e) {
    logger.error(`Error connecting to redis: "${e}"`);
    epsagon.setError(e);
  });

  return client;
};

And utils/redis.test.js file:

import { getClient } from './redis';

let redisClient;
let redisClientFailure;

describe('utils/redis.js', () => {
  beforeAll(() => {
    redisClient = getClient();
    redisClientFailure = getClient('localhost:5555', null, 0); // XXX This shouldn't throw an error because we're using lazyConnect:true which doesn't automatically connect to redis
  });

  afterAll(async () => {
    await redisClient.quit();
    await redisClientFailure.quit();
  });

  describe('should successfully init the redis client', () => {
    test('when provided connection info are correct', async () => {
      // Environment variables are from the .env.test file - This tests a localhost connection only
      expect(redisClient.options.host).toEqual(process.env.REDIS_URL.split(':')[0]);
      expect(redisClient.options.port).toEqual(parseInt(process.env.REDIS_URL.split(':')[1], 10));
      expect(redisClient.options.password).toEqual(process.env.REDIS_PASSWORD);
    });

    test('when connection info are incorrect', async () => {
      expect(redisClientFailure.options.host).toEqual('localhost');
      expect(redisClientFailure.options.port).toEqual(5555);
    });
  });

  describe('should successfully perform native operations (read/write/delete/update)', () => {
    test('when using async/await (using native node.js promises)', async () => {
      const setResult = await redisClient.set('key-1', 'value-1');
      expect(setResult).toEqual('OK');

      const result = await redisClient.get('key-1');
      expect(result).toEqual('value-1');

      const delResult = await redisClient.del('key-1');
      expect(delResult).toEqual(1);

      const setResultB = await redisClient.set('key-1', 'value-1b');
      expect(setResultB).toEqual('OK');

      const resultB = await redisClient.get('key-1');
      expect(resultB).toEqual('value-1b');

      const setResultC = await redisClient.set('key-1', 'value-1c');
      expect(setResultC).toEqual('OK');

      const resultC = await redisClient.get('key-1');
      expect(resultC).toEqual('value-1c');
    });
  });

  describe('should allow to catch an error when failing to open a connection to redis, in order to gracefully handle the error instead of crashing the app', () => {
    test('when connection info are incorrect', async () => {
      expect(redisClientFailure.options.host).toEqual('localhost');
      expect(redisClientFailure.options.port).toEqual(5555);

      try {
        await redisClientFailure.set('key-1', 'value-1'); // This should throw an error, because the connection to redis will be made when executing the
        expect(true).toBe(false); // This shouldn't be called, or the test will fail
      } catch (e) {
        expect(e).toBeDefined();
        expect(e.message).toContain('Reached the max retries per request limit');
      }
      await redisClientFailure.quit();
    });
  });
});

Env variables:

REDIS_URL=localhost:6379
REDIS_PASSWORD=mypasswordissostrong

Any news?

@v1adko I’m currently traveling, but I’ll try to take a look at it later today or tomorrow (unless Ruben beats me to it).