AdonisJS catch database insert errors with api-only while using ORM - orm

Question

Is there a way to catch database insert errors i.e. duplicate entry when using the Adonis ORM in api-only mode.
In the example below, if the username is a duplicate, it just sends a 500 internal server error and dumps a full html page of the error to the client.
Even if I don't know what the error is, I would at least like to be able to catch the error and send a more usable json object like
{error: "Unable to insert user"}
Here is some example code
const User = use('App/Models/User')
class UserController {
async register({ request }) {
const { username, email, password, first_name, last_name } = request.all()
const user = new User()
user.fill({
username,
email,
password,
first_name,
last_name
})
await user.save()
return user
}
}
Partly Solved:
I have partly solved this issue with the following code, but I feel as though there must be a better / built in way to achieve this.
const User = use('App/Models/User')
class UserController {
async saveData(object, errorMessage){
try{
await object.save()
return object
}
catch(err) {
return {error:`${errorMessage}`}
}
}
async register({ request, response }) {
const { username, email, password, first_name, last_name } = request.all()
const user = new User()
user.fill({
username,
email,
password,
first_name,
last_name
})
return this.saveData(user, "Unable to save user")
}
}

Answer 1

Try & catch is what you're looking for. You can also use global exceptions.
Regarding your duplicate error, you should also use the AdonisJs Validator to make sure you won't get this errors.
So before you save your model, check that the given user is unique for example.
So you would have something like this
async register({ request, response }) {
const { username, email, password, first_name, last_name } = request.all()
const rules = {
username: 'required|unqiue:username'
};
const validation = await validate(request.all(), rules);
if (validation.fails()) {
response.status(500).send(validation.messages());
}
const user = new User()
user.fill({
username,
email,
password,
first_name,
last_name
})
await user.save();
return user;
}