error and "already exists" handling

Question

I'm currently working on a nodejs application that uses the multichain-node package.

So far I've always created unique assets through a form by just changing the name like item1, item2, item3, ect, until the chain is so dirty I just replace it.

When it goes live however I obviously need some proper error handling.

I was thinking about catching the "already exists" error when a user clicks submit and show a message on the form. Is there a better way to check whether something like an asset already exists? I'm probably going to have lots of assets, so searching through them with listassets is not really a good option I believe.

Answer 1

You can pass an asset name directly to listassets to only get information about that asset, or an error if it doesn't exist. See the full set of parameters here: http://www.multichain.com/developers/json-rpc-api/