I Built a Retry Library Because I Kept Losing Failed API Calls

Description and use

smart-retry automatically retries Axios/Fetch requests, logs detailed failure data, and lets you inspect or replay failed requests.

Problem

Existing retry libraries only retry a function and throw on failure, leaving no record of the failed request, making debugging hard.

Outcome

The library provides automatic retries for network errors, timeouts, 429s, and 5xx responses, logs detailed failure information to disk, and exposes a manager to inspect and replay failed requests.

Workflow

• 1. Install the library: npm install @aubaid/smart-retry
• 2. Create a retry-enabled client: const client = createAxiosRetry({maxRetries:5, delay:2000, backoff:'exponential'});
• 3. Make API calls through the client (e.g., await client.get('https://api.example.com/users')).
• 4. If retries exhaust, the library logs the failed request to a file.
• 5. Retrieve logged failures via client.getRetryManager().getFailedRequests() and view log file path with getLogFilePath().

Evidence

Drop-in Axios and Fetch clients, not just a generic wrapper function

Source

Automatic failure logging when a request exhausts all retries, it gets written to disk with its URL, method, headers, body, and error

Source