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Why does using async-await in map function still return promises and not the resolved values? [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
async/await implicitly returns promise?
(5 answers)
Closed 2 years ago.
I have an API call to an array of links and I want to use a map function to save al the responses
const allImages = list.map(async (imageLink) => {
const image = await axios.get(imageLink);
return image.data.primaryImage;
});
Why allImages is still an array of promises and not an array of responses?

Because Array.map method itself is not an async method. In fact, I must remember you that JavaScript is a single threaded language. The only operations that can really happen simultaneously are I/O operations handled by your platform.
With that being said, in your case, Array.map will loop through your whole array and will return a new array containing the returned values from your callback for each original item.
An Async function always immediately and implicitly returns a promise that will then be resolved to the explicitly returned value of your function.
That is why you get an array of promises.
What you can do then, if you want to use the responses, is something like this:
const allImages = list.map(async (imageLink) => {
const image = await axios.get(imageLink);
return image.data.primaryImage;
});
Promise.all(allImages).then((responses) => {
console.log(responses); // THIS ARE THE RESPONSES YOU ARE LOOKING FOR.
});
Please let me know if you have any other doubt.
In response to comments:
JS code execution can never be paused, it would freeze your engine and would break the entire purpose of JS async implementation.
When you are inside an async function and find an await statement, code execution 'jumps' outside of the async scope 'promising' to resume where it left as soon as the Promise related to the await statement is fulfilled.
JS async/await is just syntactic sugar to deal with promises. And promises are just syntactic sugar to deal with callbacks.
See the following example using your code:
let count = 0;
const allImages = list.map(async (imageLink) => {
const image = await axios.get(imageLink);
// CODE EXECUTION 'STOPS' HERE, BUT CONTINUES OUTSIDE OF THE ASYNC SCOPE. Array.map PASSES TO NEXT ITEM.
count++;
console.log('A' + count);
return image.data.primaryImage; // THIS RESOLVES THE PROMISE.
});
// CODE EXECUTION CONTINUES
console.log('B');
Promise.all(allImages).then(() => {
// ALL PROMISES HAVE BEEN FULFILLED.
console.log('C');
});
/*
EXPECTED OUTPUT ORDER:
B
A1, A2, A3... (depending on http responses arrival order)
C
*/
Hopefully a more intuitive example that should work as you expect:
(async () => {
for (let i = 0; i < list.length; i++) {
const imageLink = list[i];
const image = await axios.get(imageLink);
// CODE EXECUTION 'STOPS' HERE.
list[i] image.data.primaryImage;
}
console.log(list); // AN ARRAY OF RESPONSES.
})();
// HOWEVER, CODE EXECUTION NEVER REALLY STOPS AND CONTINUES HERE. OUTSIDE OF THE async SCOPE.

Async function not returning value, but console.log() does: how to do? [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
How do I return the response from an asynchronous call?
(41 answers)
Closed 5 years ago.
I have an es6 class, with an init() method responsible for fetching data, transforming it, then update the class's property this.data with newly transformed data.
So far so good.
The class itself has another getPostById() method, to just do what it sounds like. Here is the code for the class:
class Posts {
constructor(url) {
this.ready = false
this.data = {}
this.url = url
}
async init() {
try {
let res = await fetch( this.url )
if (res.ok) {
let data = await res.json()
// Do bunch of transformation stuff here
this.data = data
this.ready = true
return data
}
}
catch (e) {
console.log(e)
}
}
getPostById(id){
return this.data.find( p => p.id === id )
}
}
Straightforward, except I have an async/await mechanism in the init() method.
Now, this code will work correctly:
let allPosts = new Posts('https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts')
allPosts.init()
.then( d => console.log(allPosts.getPostById(4)) )
// resulting Object correctly logged in console
but it only gets printed into the console:
How could I use allPosts.getPostById(4) as a return of a function ?
Like:
let myFunc = async () => {
const postId = 4
await allPosts.init() // I need to wait for this to finish before returning
// This is logging correct value
console.log( 'logging: ' + JSON.stringify(allPosts.getPostById( postId ), null, 4) )
// How can I return the RESULT of allPosts.getPostById( postId ) ???
return allPosts.getPostById( postId )
}
myFunc() returns a Promise but not the final value. I have read several related posts on the subject but they all give example of logging, never returning.
Here is a fiddle that includes two ways of handling init(): using Promise and using async/await. No matter what I try, I can't manage to USE the FINAL VALUE of getPostById(id).
The question of this post is: how can I create a function that will RETURN the VALUE of getPostById(id) ?
EDIT:
A lot of good answers trying to explain what Promises are in regards to the main execution loop.
After a lot of videos and other good reads, here is what I understand now:
my function init() correctly returns. However, within the main event loop: it returns a Promise, then it is my job to catch the result of this Promise from within a kinda parallel loop (not a new real thread). In order to catch the result from the parallel loop there are two ways:
use .then( value => doSomethingWithMy(value) )
use let value = await myAsyncFn(). Now here is the foolish hiccup:
await can only be used within an async function :p
thus itself returning a Promise, usable with await which should be embed in an async function, which will be usable with await etc...
This means we cannot really WAIT for a Promise: instead we should catch parallel loop indefinitely: using .then() or async/await.
Thanks for the help !

As for your comment; I'll add it as answer.
The code you write in JavaScript is run on one thread, that means that if your code could actually wait for something it will block any of your other code from getting executed. The event loop of JavaScript is explained very well in this video and if you like to read in this page.
A good example of blocking code in the browser is alert("cannot do anything until you click ok");. Alert blocks everything, the user can't even scroll or click on anything in the page and your code also blocks from executing.
Promise.resolve(22)
.then(x=>alert("blocking")||"Hello World")
.then(
x=>console.log(
"does not resolve untill you click ok on the alert:",
x
)
);
Run that in a console and you see what I mean by blocking.
This creates a problem when you want to do something that takes time. In other frameworks you'd use a thread or processes but there is no such thing in JavaScript (technically there is with web worker and fork in node but that's another story and usually far more complicated than using async api's).
So when you want to make a http request you can use fetch but fetch takes some time to finish and your function should not block (has to return something as fast as possible). This is why fetch returns a promise.
Note that fetch is implemented by browser/node and does run in another thread, only code you write runs in one thread so starting a lot of promises that only run code you write will not speed up anything but calling native async api's in parallel will.
Before promises async code used callbacks or would return an observable object (like XmlHttpRequest) but let's cover promises since you can convert the more traditional code to a promise anyway.
A promise is an object that has a then function (and a bunch of stuff that is sugar for then but does the same), this function takes 2 parameters.
Resolve handler: A function that will be called by the promise when the promise resolves (has no errors and is finished). The function will be passed one argument with the resolve value (for http requests this usually is the response).
Reject handler: A function that will be called by the promise when the promise rejects (has an error). This function will be passed one argument, this is usually the error or reason for rejection (can be a string, number or anything).
Converting callback to promise.
The traditional api's (especially nodejs api's) use callbacks:
traditionalApi(
arg
,function callback(err,value){
err ? handleFail(err) : processValue(value);
}
);
This makes it difficult for the programmer to catch errors or handle the return value in a linear way (from top to bottom). It gets even more impossible to try and do things parallel or throttled parallel with error handling (impossible to read).
You can convert traditional api's to promises with new Promise
const apiAsPromise = arg =>
new Promise(
(resolve,reject)=>
traditionalApi(
arg,
(err,val) => (err) ? reject(err) : resolve(val)
)
)
async await
This is what's called syntax sugar for promises. It makes promise consuming functions look more traditional and easier to read. That is if you like to write traditional code, I would argue that composing small functions is much easier to read. For example, can you guess what this does?:
const handleSearch = search =>
compose([
showLoading,
makeSearchRequest,
processRespose,
hideLoading
])(search)
.then(
undefined,//don't care about the resolve
compose([
showError,
hideLoading
])
);
Anayway; enough ranting. The important part is to understand that async await doesn't actually start another thread, async functions always return a promise and await doesn't actually block or wait. It's syntax sugar for someFn().then(result=>...,error=>...) and looks like:
async someMethod = () =>
//syntax sugar for:
//return someFn().then(result=>...,error=>...)
try{
const result = await someFn();
...
}catch(error){
...
}
}
The examples allways show try catch but you don't need to do that, for example:
var alwaysReject = async () => { throw "Always returns rejected promise"; };
alwaysReject()
.then(
x=>console.log("never happens, doesn't resolve")
,err=>console.warn("got rejected:",err)
);
Any error thrown or await returning a rejected promise will cause the async function to return a rejected promise (unless you try and catch it). Many times it is desirable to just let it fail and have the caller handle errors.
Catching errors could be needed when you want the promise to succeed with a special value for rejected promises so you can handle it later but the promise does not technically reject so will always resolve.
An example is Promise.all, this takes an array of promises and returns a new promise that resolves to an array of resolved values or reject when any one of them rejects. You may just want to get the results of all promises back and filter out the rejected ones:
const Fail = function(details){this.details=details;},
isFail = item => (item && item.constructor)===Fail;
Promise.all(
urls.map(//map array of urls to array of promises that don't reject
url =>
fetch(url)
.then(
undefined,//do not handle resolve yet
//when you handle the reject this ".then" will return
// a promise that RESOLVES to the value returned below (new Fail([url,err]))
err=>new Fail([url,err])
)
)
)
.then(
responses => {
console.log("failed requests:");
console.log(
responses.filter(//only Fail type
isFail
)
);
console.log("resolved requests:");
console.log(
responses.filter(//anything not Fail type
response=>!isFail(response)
)
);
}
);

Your question and the comments suggest you could use a little intuition nudge about the way the event loop works. It really is confusing at first, but after a while it becomes second nature.
Rather than thinking about the FINAL VALUE, think about the fact that you have a single thread and you can't stop it — so you want the FUTURE VALUE -- the value on the next or some future event loop. Everything you write that is not asynchronous is going to happen almost immediately — functions return with some value or undefined immediately. There's nothing you can do about. When you need something asynchronously, you need to setup a system that is ready to deal with the async values when they return sometime in the future. This is what events, callbacks, promises (and async/await) all try to help with. If some data is asynchronous, you simply can not use it in the same event loop.
So what do you do?
If you want a pattern where you create an instance, call init() and then some function that further process it, you simply need to setup a system that does the processing when the data arrives. There are a lot of ways to do this. Here's one way that's a variation on your class:
function someAsync() {
console.log("someAsync called")
return new Promise(resolve => {
setTimeout(() => resolve(Math.random()), 1000)
})
}
class Posts {
constructor(url) {
this.ready = false
this.data = "uninitilized"
this.url = url
}
init() {
this.data = someAsync()
}
time100() {
// it's important to return the promise here
return this.data.then(d => d * 100)
}
}
let p = new Posts()
p.init()
processData(p)
// called twice to illustrate point
processData(p)
async function processData(posts) {
let p = await posts.time100()
console.log("randomin * 100:", p)
}
init() saves the promise returned from someAsync(). someAsync() could be anything that returns a promise. It saves the promise in an instance property. Now you can call then() or use async/await to get the value. It will either immediately return the value if the promise has already resolved or it will deal with it when it has resolved. I called processData(p) twice just to illustrate that it doesn't calle the someAsync() twice.
That's just one pattern. There are a lot more — using events, observables, just using then() directly, or even callbacks which are unfashionable, but still can be useful.

NOTE: Wherever you use await it has to be inside an async function.
Check out the UPDATED FIDDLE
You need to use await myFunc() to get the value you expect from getPostById because an async function always returns a promise.
This sometimes is very frustrating as the whole chain needs to be converted into async functions but that's the price you pay for converting it to a synchronous code, I guess. I am not sure if that can be avoided but am interested in hearing from people who have more experience on this.
Try out the below code in your console by copying over the functions and then accessing final and await final.
NOTE:
An async function CAN contain an await expression.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Statements/async_function
There is no rule that is must have await in order to even declare an async function.
The example below uses an async function without await just to show that an async function always returns a promise.
const sample = async () => {
return 100;
}
// sample() WILL RETURN A PROMISE AND NOT 100
// await sample() WILL RETURN 100
const init = async (num) => {
return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
resolve(num);
});
}
const myFunc = async (num) => {
const k = await init(num);
return k;
}
// const final = myFunc();
// final; This returns a promise
// await final; This returns the number you provided to myFunc

Promise All in Node.js with a forEach loop

I have a function that reads a directory and copies and creates a new file within that directory.
function createFiles (countryCode) {
fs.readdir('./app/data', (err, directories) => {
if (err) {
console.log(err)
} else {
directories.forEach((directory) => {
fs.readdir(`./app/data/${directory}`, (err, files) => {
if (err) console.log(err)
console.log(`Creating ${countryCode}.yml for ${directory}`)
fs.createReadStream(`./app/data/${directory}/en.yml`).pipe(fs.createWriteStream(`./app/data/${directory}/${countryCode}.yml`))
})
})
}
})
}
How do I do this using promises or Promise All to resolve when it's complete?

First, you need to wrap each file stream in a promise that resolves when the stream emits the finish event:
new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
fs.createReadStream(`./app/data/${directory}/en.yml`).pipe(
fs.createWriteStream(`./app/data/${directory}/${countryCode}.yml`)
).on('finish', resolve);
});
The you need to collect these promises in an array. This is done by using map() instead of forEach() and returning the promise:
var promises = directories.map((directory) => {
...
return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
fs.createReadStream( ...
...
});
});
Now you have a collection of promises that you can wrap with Promise.all() and use with a handler when all the wrapped promises have resolved:
Promise.all(promises).then(completeFunction);

In recent versions of Node (8.0.0 and later), there's a new util.promisify function you can use to get a promise. Here's how we might use it:
// Of course we'll need to require important modules before doing anything
// else.
const util = require('util')
const fs = require('fs')
// We use the "promisify" function to make calling promisifiedReaddir
// return a promise.
const promisifiedReaddir = util.promisify(fs.readdir)
// (You don't need to name the variable util.promisify promisifiedXYZ -
// you could just do `const readdir = util.promisify(fs.readdir)` - but
// I call it promisifiedReaddir here for clarity.
function createFiles(countryCode) {
// Since we're using our promisified readdir function, we'll be storing
// a Promise inside of the readdirPromise variable..
const readdirPromise = promisifiedReaddir('./app/data')
// ..then we can make something happen when the promise finishes (i.e.
// when we get the list of directories) by using .then():
return readdirPromise.then(directories => {
// (Note that we only get the parameter `directories` here, with no `err`.
// That's because promises have their own way of dealing with errors;
// try looking up on "promise rejection" and "promise error catching".)
// We can't use a forEach loop here, because forEach doesn't know how to
// deal with promises. Instead we'll use a Promise.all with an array of
// promises.
// Using the .map() method is a great way to turn our list of directories
// into a list of promises; read up on "array map" if you aren't sure how
// it works.
const promises = directory.map(directory => {
// Since we want an array of promises, we'll need to `return` a promise
// here. We'll use our promisifiedReaddir function for that; it already
// returns a promise, conveniently.
return promisifiedReaddir(`./app/data/${directory}`).then(files => {
// (For now, let's pretend we have a "copy file" function that returns
// a promise. We'll actually make that function later!)
return copyFile(`./app/data/${directory}/en.yml`, `./app/data/${directory}/${countryCode}.yml`)
})
})
// Now that we've got our array of promises, we actually need to turn them
// into ONE promise, that completes when all of its "children" promises
// are completed. Luckily there's a function in JavaScript that's made to
// do just that - Promise.all:
const allPromise = Promies.all(promises)
// Now if we do a .then() on allPromise, the function we passed to .then()
// would only be called when ALL promises are finished. (The function
// would get an array of all the values in `promises` in order, but since
// we're just copying files, those values are irrelevant. And again, don't
// worry about errors!)
// Since we've made our allPromise which does what we want, we can return
// it, and we're done:
return allPromise
})
}
Okay, but, there's probably still a few things that might be puzzling you..
What about errors? I kept saying that you don't need to worry about them, but it is good to know a little about them. Basically, in promise-terms, when an error happens inside of a util.promisify'd function, we say that that promise rejects. Rejected promises behave mostly the same way you'd expect errors to; they throw an error message and stop whatever promise they're in. So if one of our promisifiedReaddir calls rejects, it'll stop the whole createFiles function.
What about that copyFile function? Well, we have two options:
Use somebody else's function. No need to re-invent the wheel! quickly-copy-file looks to be a good module (plus, it returns a promise, which is useful for us).
Program it ourselves.
Programming it ourselves isn't too hard, actually, but it takes a little bit more than simply using util.promisify:
function copyFile(from, to) {
// Hmm.. we want to copy a file. We already know how to do that in normal
// JavaScript - we'd just use a createReadStream and pipe that into a
// createWriteStream. But we need to return a promise for our code to work
// like we want it to.
// This means we'll have to make our own hand-made promise. Thankfully,
// that's not actually too difficult..
return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
// Yikes! What's THIS code mean?
// Well, it literally says we're returning a new Promise object, with a
// function given to it as an argument. This function takes two arguments
// of its own: "resolve" and "reject". We'll look at them separately
// (but maybe you can guess what they mean already!).
// We do still need to create our read and write streams like we always do
// when copying files:
const readStream = fs.createReadStream(from)
const writeStream = fs.createWriteStream(to)
// And we need to pipe the read stream into the write stream (again, as
// usual):
readStream.pipe(writeStream)
// ..But now we need to figure out how to tell the promise when we're done
// copying the files.
// Well, we'll start by doing *something* when the pipe operation is
// finished. That's simple enough; we'll just set up an event listener:
writeStream.on('close', () => {
// Remember the "resolve" and "reject" functions we got earlier? Well, we
// can use them to tell the promise when we're done. So we'll do that here:
resolve()
})
// Okay, but what about errors? What if, for some reason, the pipe fails?
// That's simple enough to deal with too, if you know how. Remember how we
// learned a little on rejected promises, earlier? Since we're making
// our own Promise object, we'll need to create that rejection ourself
// (if anything goes wrong).
writeStream.on('error', err => {
// We'll use the "reject" argument we were given to show that something
// inside the promise failed. We can specify what that something is by
// passing the error object (which we get passed to our event listener,
// as usual).
reject(err)
})
// ..And we'll do the same in case our read stream fails, just in case:
readStream.on('error', err => {
reject(err)
})
// And now we're done! We've created our own hand-made promise-returning
// function, which we can use in our `createFiles` function that we wrote
// earlier.
})
}
..And here's all the finished code, so that you can review it yourself:
const util = require('util')
const fs = require('fs')
const promisifiedReaddir = util.promisify(fs.readdir)
function createFiles(countryCode) {
const readdirPromise = promisifiedReaddir('./app/data')
return readdirPromise.then(directories => {
const promises = directory.map(directory => {
return promisifiedReaddir(`./app/data/${directory}`).then(files => {
return copyFile(`./app/data/${directory}/en.yml`, `./app/data/${directory}/${countryCode}.yml`)
})
})
const allPromise = Promies.all(promises)
return allPromise
})
}
function copyFile(from, to) {
return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
const readStream = fs.createReadStream(from)
const writeStream = fs.createWriteStream(to)
readStream.pipe(writeStream)
writeStream.on('close', () => {
resolve()
})
writeStream.on('error', err => {
reject(err)
})
readStream.on('error', err => {
reject(err)
})
})
}
Of course, this implementation isn't perfect. You could improve it by looking at other implementations - for example this one destroys the read and write streams when an error occurs, which is a bit cleaner than our method (which doesn't do that). The most reliable way would probably to go with the module I linked earlier!
I highly recommend you watch funfunfunction's video on promises. It explains how promises work in general, how to use Promise.all, and more; and he's almost certainly better at explaining this whole concept than I am!

First, create a function that returns a promise:
function processDirectory(directory) {
return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
fs.readdir(`./app/data/${directory}`, (err, files) => {
if (err) reject(err);
console.log(`Creating ${countryCode}.yml for ${directory}`);
fs.createReadStream(`./app/data/${directory}/en.yml`)
.pipe(fs.createWriteStream(`./app/data/${directory}/${countryCode}.yml`))
.on('finish', resolve);
});
});
}
Then use Promise.all:
Promise.all(directories.map(processDirectory))
.then(...)
.catch(...);

Array of promise with results separately

Basically, I'm looking for something like Promise.all(), but one that calls the function in then() for each result, as soon as that result is ready. It's trivial to write using standard callbacks like this (file reading example):
function foo(files, bar) {
for (let file of files) {
const fr = new FileReader();
fr.onload = e => bar(e.target.result);
fr.readAsDataURL(file);
}
}
I'm sure there's a library out there that does what I want, but I'd like to do that in pure JS.
To clarify, I would like to have something like this:
function foo(files) {
// do something here;
}
foo(['1','2','3']).then(/* do something here with separate results */);`

Just use map:
let read = file => return new Promise(resolve => {
const fr = new FileReader();
fr.onload = e => resolve(e.target.result);
fr.readAsDataURL(file);
});
Promise.all(files.map(file => read(file).then(bar)))
.then(allResultsFromBar => { /* use results array */ });
Note that .then promotes anything returned from a function it executes to a promise (i.e. it calls Promise.resolve on it implicitly), so Promise.all is guaranteed to receive an array of promises no matter what bar returns.

Working from #jib's answer and the comment :
I want to have a function readFiles that takes a list of files as its only argument, and I want it to return some kind of promise that I could call then() on, and the function that I would put in then() would be called separately for each of the files.
That's not quite possible because a .then() callback is only called once, not once per result delivered by Promise.all().
This is close :
let read = file => return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
const fr = new FileReader();
fr.onload = e => resolve(e.target.result);
fr.onerror = reject; // don't forget to reject on error
fr.readAsDataURL(file);
});
let readFiles = files => return Promise.all(files.map(read)); // <<<<< this is the line you seek
Allowing you to write :
const files = ["...", "...", "..."];
readFiles(files)
.then(allFileResults => allFileResults.map(bar)); // bar is your function for processing file results
// possibly chain another .then() if required to observe/process bar()'s results
Thus bar() will operate on each of the file contents in turn.
However, in getting the code as close as possible to what you asked for :
your "as soon as" requirement isn't truly meet; the allFileContents.map(bar) process is downstream of Promise.all(), therefore waits for all files to be read before commencing the bar() calls.
any single error in readFiles(...) will (without some sort of error recovery) scupper the whole enterprise; allFileContents.map(bar) would never be called on any of the files; that may be good or bad depending on your application; good news though, error recover is easily inserted.
as written, bar() must be synchronous; if not, you can simply insert another Promise.all(), ie allFileResults => Promise.all(allFileResults.map(bar)).
For these reasons, #jib's solution may well be the one to go for but it depends on what the application demands.

Loop over javascript object whilst running async calls within

I'm trying to load multiple files using the THREE.XHRLoader and when it completes I want to take the key of that object and add it along with the file to another object (loadedFiles). The problem I have is that whenever I try to retrieve the key for the object that was loaded it always returns the last key in the object array because the callback for the load function gets called after the loop has ended.
I've got something like this:
var loader = new THREE.XHRLoader();
var loaded = 0;
for (var k in filesToLoad) {
loader.load(filesToLoad[k], function(file) {
console.log(k); // This will always return the last key when I want
//it to the return the key that was loaded instead!
loadedFiles[k] = file;
loaded++;
if (loaded == Object.keys(filesToLoad).length) {
console.log(loadedFiles);
}
});
}

You could wrap your THREE calls in a promise then use Promise.all to resolve once all they have. (pseudo code)
let promises = Object.keys(filesToLoad)
.map(k => {
return new Promise((res, rej) => {
loader.load(filesToLoad[k], res, rej); //Assuming loader has success, error callbacks
});
});
Promise.all(promises)
.then(res => console.log(res)); // [file, file, file...]
Obviously depending on your browser support depends on ES6 but there are ES5 compatible promise libraries you can use instead.
Note all your files will be loaded in parallel when each promise is created. The requests will already be pending before they go into Promise.all
Promise.all