How to throw an exception in JavaScript

The throw statement allows you to throw your own custom exception. When it is thrown the statements that come after it won't be executed and control will be passed to the first catch block in the call stack. In JavaScript, all exceptions are just objects which means we can throw pretty much anything. Here's a simple example with a string:

throw 'Invalid email supplied for user';

And here's a simple example where we're throwing an object:

function UserException(message) {
  this.message = message
  this.name = 'UserException'
}

throw new UserException('Invalid email supplied for user')

throw new UserException('Invalid phone number supplied for user)

Because our UserException is just an object it's also possible to modify it to include metadata that would help us with debugging such as the offending variable.

function UserException(message, invalid) {
  this.message = message;
  this.invalid = invalid;
  this.name = 'UserException';
}

throw new UserException('Invalid email supplied for user', user.email);

throw new UserException('Invalid phone number supplied for user', user.phone);

This metadata can then be accessed when we catch our exception and either logged or shown to the user.