Proxy Errors

Errors that occur during a proxy request can be due to several different underlying causes. The sections below describe each type of proxy error, and how to identify and distinguish between each error scenario.

Proxy Destination Errors

The proxy destination may return an error response, the format of which is completely controlled by the destination API. When an error occurs at the destination, the response is forwarded through the Basis Theory proxy as-is. In particular, these types of errors will have the same status code, headers, and response body as returned by the destination API.

Keep in mind, the destination response may be modified by a response transform on a pre-configured proxy. Response transforms will only be executed when the destination returns a 2xx status code, and other non-2xx statuses will result in an immediate response from the proxy.

You can identify whether an error was returned by the destination by inspecting the BT-PROXY-DESTINATION-STATUS response header, which will indicate the status code that Basis Theory received from the destination API.

Basis Theory Errors

If the proxy request is invalid (e.g. Basis Theory authentication fails, an invalid BT-PROXY-KEY is provided, an invalid detokenization expression is specified) or if a transform fails (e.g. code contains a syntax error, code throws an error), then the proxy will wrap a standard RFC 7807 error inside a proxy_error property to distinguish between Basis Theory errors and destination errors. For example, an invalid detokenization expression on a proxy request such as:

{
    "invalid": "{{ unknown_token_id }}"
}

would result in the following error response:

{
     "proxy_error": {
        "errors": {},
        "title": "Invalid proxy request",
        "status": 400,
        "detail": "Failed to detokenize some tokens: unknown_token_id"
    }
}

Proxy Transform Errors

Custom errors can be returned from request and response transforms by throwing reactor errors defined in the @basis-theory/basistheory-reactor-formulas-sdk-js npm package (proxy transforms are executed in Basis Theory's secure serverless reactor environment).

Any errors thrown from a transform will cause the proxy request to be terminated and the HTTP response to be immediately returned. In particular, errors thrown from a request transform will cause the proxy request to terminate before calling the destination API.

Reactor Errors

All pre-defined reactor error types, excluding errors of type CustomHttpResponseError, will be returned in their standard format and wrapped in a proxy_error property to distinguish these errors from destination API errors.

For example, a transform containing the following code:

const { AuthenticationError } = require('@basis-theory/basis-theory-reactor-formulas-sdk-js');

module.exports = async function (req) {
    const apiKey = req.args.headers['MY-CUSTOM-API-KEY'];

    if (!apiKey)
        throw new AuthenticationError('MY-CUSTOM-API-KEY header is required');

    // ...
}

would result in the following error response with a 401 status code if the MY-CUSTOM-API-KEY header is omitted:

{
    "proxy_error": {
        "errors": {
            "error": [
                "MY-CUSTOM-API-KEY header is required"
            ]
        },
        "title": "One or more validation errors occurred.",
        "status": 401,
        "detail": "Authentication Failed"
    }
}

Custom Errors

To provide more control over the errors returned from a proxy transform, a CustomHttpResponseError can be thrown from the transform. This will enable you to specify a status code, custom headers, and have complete control over the response body that is returned.

For example, a transform containing the following code:

const { CustomHttpResponseError } = require('@basis-theory/basis-theory-reactor-formulas-sdk-js');

module.exports = async function (req) {
  throw new CustomHttpResponseError({
    status: 400,
    headers: {
        "Custom-Response-Header-1": "custom-value-1",
        "Custom-Response-Header-2": "custom-value-2"
    },
    body: {
        myCustomError: "My custom error message"
    }
  });
};

results in an API response with status code 400, having the headers:

Custom-Response-Header-1: custom-value-1
Custom-Response-Header-2: custom-value-2

and the response body:

{
    "myCustomError": "My custom error message"
}