How to handle errors in async Express?

You shouldn't try/catch on every route. You can use middleware to catch handle all errors and respond with the appropriate status code. A short example is:

app.use(function (err, req, res, next) {
  console.error(err.stack)
  res.status(500).send({ status: false })
})

You can read more about error handling in Express here

I suggest creating a errorHandler.js file in your project with these contents.

class ErrorHandler extends Error {
  constructor(statusCode, message) {
    super();
    this.statusCode = statusCode;
    this.message = message;
  }
}

 const handleError = (err, res) => {
  const { statusCode, message } = err;
  res.status(statusCode).json({
    status: "error",
    statusCode,
    message
  });
};
module.exports = {
  ErrorHandler, 
  handleError
}

Then in your api.index.js you register a middleware, after importing the exported members of your errorHandler.js file, like so.

import {handleError} from errorHandler.js;
app.use((err, req, res, next) => {
  handleError(err, res);
});

then each time you want to handle a potential error, import the ErrorHandler class from the ErrorHandler.js file, and then simply use this signature

import {ErrorHandler} from errorHandler.js;
if(somethingWentAwry){
     throw new ErrorHandler(400, "something went really awry")
 }

Since the handleError function, and its use as a middle-ware in api.index.js doesn't handle next, the chain ends when you throw an error.

The solution is inspired by Chinedu Orie's post here