Waiting for an Asynchronous method in NodeJS

Question

I've looked high and low, and can only find how to write async functions, which I already understand.

What I am trying to do is run an async method in a triggered event [EventEmitter], but such a simple thing seems to be just simply not possible as I can find.

Consider the following...

// Your basic async method..
function doSomething(callback) {
    var obj = { title: 'hello' };

    // Fire an event for event handlers to alter the object.
    // EvenEmitters are called synchronously
    eventobj.emit('alter_object', obj);

    callback(null, obj);
}

// when this event is fired, I want to manipulate the data
eventobj.on('alter_object', function(obj) {
    obj.title += " world!";

    // Calling this async function here means that our
    // event handler will return before our data is retrieved.
    somemodule.asyncFunction(callback(err, data) {
        obj.data = data;
    });
});

As you can see in the last few lines, the event handler will finish before the object's data property is added.

What I need is something where I can turn the async function into an sync function and get the results there and then. so for example...

obj.data = somemodule.asyncFunction();

I've looked at the wait.for module, the async module, and none of these will not work. I've even looked into the yield method, but it seems not yet fully implemented into the V8 engine.

I've also tried using a while loop too wait for data to populate, but this just brings with it the CPU overload issue.

Has anyone experienced this and found a design pattern to get around this?

Answer 1

You cannot turn an async function into a synchronous one in node.js. It just cannot be done.

If you have an asynchronous result, you cannot return it synchronously or wait for it. You will have to redesign the interface to use an asynchronous interface (which nearly always involves passing in a callback that will be called when the result is ready).

If you're wanting to do something after you .emit() an event that is itself going to do something asynchronously and you want to wait until after the async thing finished, then the event emitter is probably not the right interface. You'd rather have a function call that returns a promise or takes a callback as an argument. You could manipulate an eventEmitter to use this, but you'd have to post back a second event when the async operation finished and have the original caller not do it's second part until it receives the second event (which is really not a good way to go).

Bottom line - you need a different design that works with async responses (e.g. callbacks or promises).

Answer 2

Seems what I wanted to do is just not possible and the two models conflict. To achieve what I wanted in the end, I encapsulated my modules into an array-like object with some event methods that will pass it on to the module's object, which inherited the async-eventemitter class.

So, think of it like so...

• My custom app modules may inherit the async-eventemitter module so they have the .on() and .emit(), etc. methods.
• I create a customised array item, that will allow me to pass an event on to the module in question that will work asynchronously.

The code I created (and this is by no means complete or perfect)...

// My private indexer for accessing the modules array (below) by name.
var module_dict = {};

// An array of my modules on my (express) app object
app.modules = [];

// Here I extended the array with easier ways to add and find modules.
// Haven't removed some code to trim down this.  Let me know if you want the code.
Object.defineProperty(app.modules, 'contains', { enumerable: false, ... });
Object.defineProperty(app.modules, 'find', { enumerable: false, ... });

// Allows us to add a hook/(async)event to a module, if it exists
Object.defineProperty(app.modules, 'on', { enumerable: false, configurable: false, value: function(modulename, action, func) {
    if (app.modules.contains(modulename)) {
        var modu = app.modules.find(modulename);
        if (modu.module && modu.module['on']) {
            // This will pass on the event to the module's object that
            // will have the async-eventemitter inherited
            modu.module.on(action, func);
        }
    }
} });
Object.defineProperty(app.modules, 'once', { enumerable: false, configurable: false, value: function(modulename, action, func) {
    if (app.modules.contains(modulename)) {
        var modu = app.modules.find(modulename);
        if (modu.on) {
            modu.on(action, func);
        }
    }
} });

This then allows me to bind an event handler to a module by simply calling something like the following... .on(module_name, event_name, callback)

app.modules.on('my_special_module_name', 'loaded', function(err, data, next) { 
    // ...async stuff, that then calls next to continue to the next event... 
    if (data.filename.endsWith('.jpg'))
        data.dimensions = { width: 100, height: 100 };

    next(err, data);
});

And then to execute it I would do something like (express)...

app.get('/foo', function(req, res, next) {
   var data = { 
       filename: 'bar.jpg'
   };

   // Now have event handlers alter/update our data
   // (eg, extend an object about a file with image data if that file is an image file).
   my_special_module.emit('loaded', data, function(err, data) {
       if (err) next(err);
       res.send(data);

       next();
   });
});

Again, this is just an example of what I did, so i've probably missed something in my copy above, but effectively it's the design I ended up using and it worked like a treat, and I was able to extend data on an object before being pushed out to my HTTP response, without having to replace the main [expressjs] object's standard EventEmitter model.

(eg, I added image data for files that we're loaded that we're image files. If anyone wants the code, let me know, I am more than happy to share what I did)