How can I recover from node stream error?

Question

Is it possible to recover from a node stream error? For example with promises you can do something like

async function getThumbnail(id, width, height) {
    try {
        const thumbnail = await readThumbnail(id, width, height);
        return thumbnail;
    } catch {
        // The thumbnail doesn't exist, so we will create and cache it
        const thumbnail = await createThumbnail(id, width, height);
        return thumbnail;
    }
}

If readThumbnail() returns a stream rather than a promise is it possible to recover from a stream error if the thumbnail doesn't exist? The goal is for the getThumbnail() method to always return a working stream regardless of whether the thumbnail exists or not.

Answer 1

I found a way to to do it using a third stream

function getThumbnail(id, width, height) {
    const readable = new PassThrough();

    readThumbnail(id, width, height)
        // It is important that this error handler is above the pipe
        .on('error', error => {
            createThumbnail(id, width, height).pipe(readable);
        })
        .pipe(readable);

    return readable;
}