How to stop execution of a node.js script?
You can use process.exit()
to immediately forced terminate a nodejs program.
You can also pass relevant exit code to indicate the reason.
process.exit() //default exit code is 0, which means *success*
process.exit(1) //Uncaught Fatal Exception: There was an uncaught exception, and it was not handled by a domain or an 'uncaughtException' event handler
process.exit(5) //Fatal Error: There was a fatal unrecoverable error in V8. Typically a message will be printed to stderr with the prefix FATAL ERROR
More on exit codes
Using a return
is the correct way to stop a function executing. You are correct in that process.exit()
would kill the whole node process, rather than just stopping that individual function. Even if you are using a callback function, you'd want to return it to stop the function execution.
ASIDE: The standard callback is a function where the first argument is an error, or null if there was no error, so if you were using a callback the above would look like:
var thisIsTrue = false;
exports.test = function(request, response, cb){
if (thisIsTrue) {
response.send('All is good!');
cb(null, response)
} else {
response.send('ERROR! ERROR!');
return cb("THIS ISN'T TRUE!");
}
console.log('I do not want this to happen. If there is an error.');
}