expo + react-native: There was a problem sending log messages

Issue

I am building a react-native app that I recently moved to expo. The app seems to display the expected screen, but before it completes, I am receiving the following error message: console.error: "There was a problem sending log messages to your development environment, {"name": "Error"}". When I view the expo browser screen I see the following stack trace when I click on the device:

  node_modules/expo/build/logs/LogSerialization.js:146:14 in _captureConsoleStackTrace
  node_modules/expo/build/logs/LogSerialization.js:41:24 in Object.serializeLogDataAsync$
  node_modules/regenerator-runtime/runtime.js:62:39 in tryCatch
  node_modules/regenerator-runtime/runtime.js:288:21 in Generator.invoke [as _invoke]
  node_modules/regenerator-runtime/runtime.js:114:20 in Generator.prototype.(anonymous
  node_modules/regenerator-runtime/runtime.js:62:39 in tryCatch
  node_modules/regenerator-runtime/runtime.js:152:19 in invoke
  node_modules/regenerator-runtime/runtime.js:187:10 in <unknown>
  node_modules/promise/setimmediate/core.js:45:4 in tryCallTwo
  node_modules/promise/setimmediate/core.js:200:12 in doResolve

Here is a screenshot of the error:

What does this error mean? I found some doc referring to removing console.log statements and removed the ones I had but that did not help.

Solution

TL;DR

This issue only happens when you log an object which is too big for console.log function to display. So when ever logging the response from an API or Server be sure to destructure it properly and only keep the data you need.

---

For anyone who wants a more detailed answer to this issue, please keep reading..

I ran into this weird error as well this morning. I am developing in react native with Expo Client for an app I'm building with the popular MERN stack (mongoDB, Express, React Native and Node.js). I am mentioning that because I use a lot, I mean A LOT of console logs in the backend and this didn't cause me any problem thus far. So in my case, I was not sure if this error originated from any console.log I was using.

I checked the expo debugger's stacktrace in the console (in port 19001), because the red screen doesn't provide much info on the origin of the error (a lot of <unknown> in place of functions) and I saw that it had something to do with my actions functions and the payload I was sending to my reducer when I performed a specific action that was communicating with the backend. The backend's response was formatted like this:

payload: {
  config: {
     .
     .
     .
 }
 data: { the only part that i needed... }
 headers: {
    .
    .
    .
}

..other stuff from the response..

There's not much to notice above, but this:

The actual paylaod I was interested in is under the prop key data and was the only thing I needed from the response. BUT, in my ignorance I was sending everything to my reducer. So what I am saying is that I was sending a really big object as payload and I only needed a part of it. So when I did some destructuring and kept the data that I mentioned above, the error went away.

In conclusion, for others that may stumble across this "error" which isn't actually an error, because the app doesn't crash or anything, since you can dismiss the window and the app goes on, when you do some fetching from the server, make sure you keep only the data and not the whole response object, along with the meta from the call. It seems that redux-logger throws this because it doesn't like the structure of it.

Answered By - Tim Pegas