feat: set status code to 500 if unexpected error occurs before stream…

…ing in app router (#56236)

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This PR therefore introduces to always set response status code to 500
unless it is a `NotFoundError` or `RedirectError`. This PR would fix
issue #56235. See also:
https://codesandbox.io/p/sandbox/nice-panini-2z3mcp .

**Current Behavior**
At the moment, when an unexpected error occurs during app server
rendering, a 200 ok is returned as status code. This seems to be
undesirable because of the success status CDNs will cache the error
pages and crawlers will index the page considering the error content as
the actual content.

**Desired Behavior**
This issue is related to discussion
#53225. Even though I
understand that the response status code cannot be set if streaming has
started, in my view it would be best to set the response status to 500
whenever it can (so before the streaming has started) for SEO and (CDN)
http caching. This would also be consistent with how 404s currently
work; that is, response status code is set to 404 if `NotFoundError`
occurred before streaming (related
[issue](#43831) &
[PR](#55542)).

Ideally, when a runtime error happens after streaming, a `<meta
name="robots" content="noindex" />` would also be added. But I didn't
want to make the PR too complex before receiving feedback.

---------

Co-authored-by: Vũ Văn Dũng <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Tobias Koppers <[email protected]>

packages/next/src/server/app-render/app-render.tsx

@@ -728,6 +728,9 @@ async function renderToHTMLOrFlightImpl(
         }
 
         const is404 = res.statusCode === 404
+        if (!is404 && !hasRedirectError) {
+          res.statusCode = 500
+        }
 
         // Preserve the existing RSC inline chunks from the page rendering.
         // To avoid the same stream being operated twice, clone the origin stream for error rendering.

test/e2e/app-dir/app/app/(newroot)/dashboard/project/[projectId]/page.js

@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 import { use } from 'react'
 
-function getData({ params }) {
+async function getData({ params }) {
   return {
     now: Date.now(),
     params,

test/production/app-dir/unexpected-error/app/isr-unexpected-error/page.tsx

@@ -0,0 +1,9 @@
+export const revalidate = 1
+
+export default function UnexpectedErrorPage(props) {
+  // use query param to only throw error during runtime, not build time
+  if (props.searchParams.error) {
+    throw new Error('Oh no')
+  }
+  return <p id="page">/unexpected-error</p>
+}

test/production/app-dir/unexpected-error/app/layout.tsx

@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
+export default function Root({ children }: { children: React.ReactNode }) {
+  return (
+    <html>
+      <body>{children}</body>
+    </html>
+  )
+}

test/production/app-dir/unexpected-error/app/ssr-unexpected-error-after-streaming/loading.tsx

@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+export default function Loading() {
+  return <p>loading</p>
+}

test/production/app-dir/unexpected-error/app/ssr-unexpected-error-after-streaming/page.tsx

@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
+export default function UnexpectedErrorPage(props) {
+  // use query param to only throw error during runtime, not build time
+  if (props.searchParams.error) {
+    throw new Error('Oh no')
+  }
+  return <p id="page">/unexpected-error</p>
+}

test/production/app-dir/unexpected-error/app/ssr-unexpected-error/page.tsx

@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
+export default function UnexpectedErrorPage(props) {
+  // use query param to only throw error during runtime, not build time
+  if (props.searchParams.error) {
+    throw new Error('Oh no')
+  }
+  return <p id="page">/unexpected-error</p>
+}

test/production/app-dir/unexpected-error/next.config.js

@@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
+/**
+ * @type {import('next').NextConfig}
+ */
+const nextConfig = {}
+
+module.exports = nextConfig

test/production/app-dir/unexpected-error/unexpected-error.test.ts

@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
+import { createNextDescribe } from 'e2e-utils'
+
+createNextDescribe(
+  'unexpected-error',
+  {
+    files: __dirname,
+  },
+  ({ next }) => {
+    it('should set response status to 500 for unexpected errors in ssr app route', async () => {
+      const res = await next.fetch('/ssr-unexpected-error?error=true')
+      expect(res.status).toBe(500)
+    })
+
+    it('cannot change response status when streaming has started', async () => {
+      const res = await next.fetch(
+        '/ssr-unexpected-error-after-streaming?error=true'
+      )
+      expect(res.status).toBe(200)
+    })
+
+    it('should set response status to 500 for unexpected errors in isr app route', async () => {
+      const res = await next.fetch('/isr-unexpected-error?error=true')
+      expect(res.status).toBe(500)
+    })
+  }
+)