afn

async function utilities

Installation:

npm i --save afn

Inclusion or one or more sub-modules:

import { afn } from 'afn'; // ES6/TS module
const { map, memo, http, Queue } = afn(options);

const { map, memo, http, Queue } = require('afn')(options); // JS

Specific sub-modules can be required individually:

const map = require('afn/map')(mapOptions) ;
const memo = require('afn/memo')(memoOptions) ;
const Queue = require('afn/queue')(queueOptions) ;
const http = require('afn/http')(queueOptions) ;

Contents

• map
• memo
• Queue
• http

map

"map" works like an aynchronous, parallel object/array mapper, similar to Array.prototype.map() or Promsie.all(). The map function takes three parameters:

• the entity to iterate over,
• optionally an object in which to place the results (they are returned from the async map in any case),
• the async function to call on each iteration.

The function completes when all the aync-iteration function calls have completed (via a return or exception). The order of execution of each async function is not guarenteed. When complete, the async-return is a complementary object or array containing the mapped values as returned asynchronously. If present, the return values are placed into the optional second parameter. If omitted, a new object or array is created to hold the results. The initial argument (the entity to iterate over) can be either:

• An Object - each field is passed to the async-iterator function
• An Array - each element is passed to the async-iterator function
• A single Number - the async function is invoked with the integer values 0 to Number-1
• An array or Object of async functions - each function in the array is invoked asynchronously. In this case the third parameter must be omitted.

Example: mapping an object

var map = require('afn/map')() ;

// Asynchronously map every key in "myObject" by adding 1 to the value of the key
mapped = await map(myObject,async function(key){
	// This can be async without issues
	return myObject[key]+1 ;
}) ;
// All done - mapped contains the new object with all the elements "incremeneted"

Example: map an array of URLs to their content

var map = require('afn/map')() ;
var http = require('async-http-lib') ; // A third party module that does HTTP as async functions

mapped = await map(['www.google.com','www.bbc.co.uk'],async function(value,index){
	// Get the URL body asynchronously.
	return await http.getBody("http://"+value) ;
}) ;
// All done - mapped is the new array containing the bodies

Example: iterate through a set of integer values and do something asynchronous with each one

var map = require('afn/map')() ;
var http = require('async-http-lib') ; // A third party module that does HTTP as async functions

mapped = await map(3,async function(i){
	// Get the URL body asynchronously.
	return await http.getBody("http://example.com/cgi?test="+i) ;
}) ;
// All done - mapped is the new array containing the bodies

Example: execute arbitrary async functions in parallel and return when they are all complete, just like Promise.all()

var map = require('afn/map')() ;

mapped = await map([asyncFn("abc"),asyncFn2("def")]) ;

// All done - mapped is an new array containing the async-returns

Example: execute arbitrary labelled async functions in parallel and return when they are all complete

var map = require('afn/map')() ;

mapped = await map({for:asyncFn("abc"),bar:asyncFn2("def")}) ;
console.log(mapped.foo, mapped.bar) ;

// All done - mapped is an new object containing the async-returns in each named member

In the latter two cases, where there is only an single parameter, the async return value from map is a corresponding array or object to the parameter where each member has been resolved if a Promise, or passed through unchanged if not.

The order of execution is not guaranteed (as with all calls to map), but the completion routine will only be called when all async functions have finished either via a return or exception. There is no programmatic limit to the number of async functions that can be passed in the array. Note that the functions have no useful parameters (use a closure or wrap the function if necessary).

Exceptions in mapped functions

By default, in the event of an error or exception in the async-mapping function, the error value is substitued in the mapped object or array. This works well since all the exceptions will be instances of the JavaScript Error() type, and so they can be easily tested for in the mapped object after completion.

Alternatively, if instantiated with the option throwOnError, if any of the async invocations throw an exception, map() will throw a MapError() when all the functions have completed, with a member called results containing the other results. To use this option:

var map = require('afn/map')({throwOnError:true}) ;

Instances of 'map' are independent of each other - you can require() both the throwing and non-throwing version in different modules, or the same module as different variables.

memo

	const memoizedFunction = afn.memo(_asyncFunction_, {
		ttl:0,								/* Maximum time in milliseconds to memoize the result */
		key:function(self,		/* The 'this' value passed to the asyncFunction */
			args,								/* The 'arguments' option passed to the asyncFunction */
			asyncFunction) {		/* The original 'afn' value */
				/* Return an object that disambigutes between calls. The default implementation is all
				enumerable values within self and args. Returning 'undefined' means don't cache */
				return {args:args,self:self} ;
			}  
	}) ;

The returned memoizedFunction is an async function with the same signature as _asyncFunction_. It also has the an additional member function (not async) that clears the cache for subsequent calls:

		// Clear the cache for a specific function
		memoizedFunction.clearCache() ;
		// This will always call the underlying _asyncFunction_
		await memoizedFunction(...)

Example

		// An expensive function that retrieves user details from a database
		async function fetchAndDisplayUserInfo(userid,element) { ... }

		// Memoize it based only on the userid - the destination HTML element doesn't matter
		const displayUserInfo = afn.memo(fetchAndDisplayUserInfo,{
			ttl:10*60*1000,	// Cache for 10 minutes
			key(self,args,fn){
				return args[0] ; // Don't care about 'element', or the value of 'this'
			}
		})

			...

		await displayUserInfo(id,document.getElementById("user-info"))
		// Subsequent calls to displayUserInfo with the same id within 10 minutes will produce the same result

Queue

Creates a queue with an async iterator:

Example

		async function handleQueue(q) {
		    for (var i of q) {
		        console.log("pop7", await i, q.length());
		        await sleep(200);
		    }
		}

		/* ES5 equivalent with for...of construct */
		async function handleQueueES5(q) {
		    var i,iterator = q.iterator() ;
		    while (!(i = iterator.next()).done) {
		        console.log("pop5", await i.value, q.length());
		        await sleep(200);
		    };
		}

		var q = new AsyncQueue();
		window.addEventListener('mousemove', function (e) {
		    log("add", e.x);
		    q.add(e.x);
		});

		handleQueue(q);
		// handleQueueES5(q);