Node.js handling mysql disconnects.

You may lose the connection to a MySQL server due to network problems, the server timing you out, the server being restarted, or crashing. All of these events are considered fatal errors, and will have the err.code = 'PROTOCOL_CONNECTION_LOST'. See the Error Handling section for more information.

A good way to handle such unexpected disconnects is shown below:

var db_config = {
  host: 'localhost',
    user: 'root',
    password: '',
    database: 'example'
};

var connection;

function handleDisconnect() {
  connection = mysql.createConnection(db_config); // Recreate the connection, since
                                                  // the old one cannot be reused.

  connection.connect(function(err) {              // The server is either down
    if(err) {                                     // or restarting (takes a while sometimes).
      console.log('error when connecting to db:', err);
      setTimeout(handleDisconnect, 2000); // We introduce a delay before attempting to reconnect,
    }                                     // to avoid a hot loop, and to allow our node script to
  });                                     // process asynchronous requests in the meantime.
                                          // If you're also serving http, display a 503 error.
  connection.on('error', function(err) {
    console.log('db error', err);
    if(err.code === 'PROTOCOL_CONNECTION_LOST') { // Connection to the MySQL server is usually
      handleDisconnect();                         // lost due to either server restart, or a
    } else {                                      // connnection idle timeout (the wait_timeout
       throw err;                                 // server variable configures this)
    });
}

handleDisconnect();

As you can see in the example above, re-connecting a connection is done by establishing a new connection. Once terminated, an existing connection object cannot be re-connected by design.

With Pool, disconnected connections will be removed from the pool freeing up space for a new connection to be created on the next getConnection call.

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