golang-error-handling

Idiomatic Go error handling enforces wrapping with %w, inspects chains via errors.Is and errors.As, and uses errors.Join for multi-error scenarios to preserve context and ensure diagnosable failures. It detects single-handling violations and mis-wrapped errors across repositories.

The best way to avoid log-and-return patterns in Go is applying a single-handling rule: return errors wrapped with %w immediately, and defer structured slog logging to the top level. This prevents duplicate logs and lost error context during incident response.

errors.Join combines multiple Go errors into a single chain, allowing validation of multiple items without early exit. It preserves the individual error contexts so callers can inspect the combined chain using errors.Is or errors.As for comprehensive failure analysis.

Structured logging with slog is needed when you want low-cardinality error messages and actionable observability. You attach variable data as structured attributes rather than interpolating strings, keeping error chains intact for aggregators and incident response.

Yes, samber/oops integrates with slog to provide production-ready Go errors with structured attributes and stack traces. It ensures low-cardinality messages and preserves error chains, keeping error observability consistent without overwhelming log aggregators.

Interpolating variable data into Go error strings creates high-cardinality messages that overwhelm log aggregators and break observability. It loses structured context, making errors less diagnosable; carrying data as slog attributes or samber/oops structured fields preserves error chains.