boom provides a set of functions for returning HTTP errors. Each function responds with a JSON object which includes the following properties:

• statusCode - the HTTP status code.
• error- the HTTP status message (e.g. 'Bad Request', 'Internal Server Error') derived from statusCode.
• message - the error message which can be optionally set by the developer.

All boom functions take a http.ResponseWriter as an argument which means boom should be compatible with any Golang http frameworks that also use http.ResponseWriter.

To see the full list of boom functions, check out the documentation on godoc.org

This library is inspired by the wonderful JavaScript library https://www.npmjs.com/package/boom.

go get github.com/darahayes/go-boom

import (
	"github.com/darahayes/go-boom"
)

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"net/http"
	"github.com/darahayes/go-boom"
)

func myHandler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
	boom.NotFound(w, "Sorry, there's nothing here.")
}

func main() {
	http.HandleFunc("/", myHandler)
	http.ListenAndServe(":8080", nil)
}

With this example, the response from the / endpoint would be:

{
  "error": "Not Found",
  "message": "Sorry, there's nothing here.",
  "statusCode": 404
}

boom also accepts arguments of type error, or any struct that implements the built in error interface. (i.e. has an Error() function which returns a string)

func myHandler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
	err := errors.New("You shall not pass!")
	boom.Unathorized(w, err)
}

and the response:

{
  "error": "Unathorized",
  "message": "You shall not pass!",
  "statusCode": 401
}

It's also possible to provide no error message at all:

func myHandler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
	boom.BadRequest(w)
}

and the response:

{
  "error": "Bad Request",
  "message": "Bad Request",
  "statusCode": 400
}

boom also comes with a RecoverHandler middleware function that can be used to recover from unexpected panics. It can be used directly or with any router library that deals with the http.Handler type. (most of them do!)

boom.RecoverHandler does three things:

1. Recovers from unexpected panics.
2. Logs a stack trace in the server logs.
3. Uses boom.Internal() to return a generic 500 Internal Server Error. This prevents accidental leakage of sensitive info in the response.

func myHandler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
	panic("Uh oh, something happened")
}

func main() {
	http.Handle("/", boom.RecoverHandler(http.HandlerFunc(myHandler)))
	http.ListenAndServe(":8080", nil)
}

func myHandler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
	panic("Uh oh, something happened")
}

func main() {
	router := mux.NewRouter().StrictSlash(true)
	router.HandleFunc("/", myHandler)
	
	router.Use(boom.RecoverHandler)
	
	http.ListenAndServe(":8080", router)
}

In both examples above, a stack trace is printed in the server logs and the response is the following:

{
  "error": "Internal Server Error",
  "message": "Internal Server Error",
  "statusCode": 500
}

To see the full list of API methods check out the documentation on godoc.org