maker.authenticate does not throw an error when the network is not accessible

[bryanwb]

await maker.authenticate() silently fails when the target network is not accessible.

[levity]

Can you provide more detail about the situation? When I try this with a network address that is not listening, I get the expected output, e.g.:

const Maker = require('@makerdao/dai')
const url = 'http://localhost:9999'

async function main() {
  const maker = Maker.create('http', { url })
  try {
    await maker.authenticate()
  } catch (err) {
    console.log(err)
  }
}

main()

outputs

{ [Error: connect ECONNREFUSED 127.0.0.1:9999] message: 'connect ECONNREFUSED 127.0.0.1:9999', code: -32603 }

Does await maker.authenticate() actually complete, or does it just hang? I would expect the latter behavior (with an eventual timeout) if you try to connect to an address that is unresponsive, e.g. if changing url above to http://google.com:9999.

[levity]

Thanks for creating dai-shell, btw! Sorry it took us so long to respond to you. Guess you must have sorted things out in the meantime :)

[bryanwb]

alright, the fault was mine. I had copied the configuration for Maker settings for the test network from here https://github.com/makerdao/dai.js/blob/dev/test/integration/dai.spec.js#L59-L77 rather than from the official docs. W/ that configuration, authenticate() doesn't return an error if it fails to connect.
my bad!

[bryanwb]

OK, I was able to reproduce the error by slightly modifying your script. Adding privateKey to the settings caused the connection error to be dropped.

the following

# tmp.js
const Maker = require('@makerdao/dai')

async function main() {
  //const settings = {url: 'http://localhost:2000'};
  const settings = {url: 'http://localhost:2000', privateKey: '0xxxxxxx'};
  const maker = Maker.create('http', settings);
  try {
    await maker.authenticate()
  } catch (err) {
    console.log(err)
  }
  console.log('after authentication')
}

main()

outputs the following when the local 'test' network is not running

$ node tmp.js
Web3 is initializing...
Web3 is connecting...

note that after authentication is not displayed

[levity]

interesting; i can reproduce that too. will look into it