retry-promise-lite 🚀

A tiny and lightweight JavaScript utility to retry async functions (like API calls, DB queries, or file operations) with configurable attempts, delay, and optional exponential backoff.

Features

• Retry any async function that returns a Promise.
• Configurable number of retries.
• Configurable delay between retries.
• Optional exponential backoff for smarter retry strategies.
• Works in Node.js and React/ESM projects.
• Tiny and simple — no dependencies.

Installation

npm install retry-promise-lite

Usage

Basic Example

import retry from "retry-promise-lite";

let count = 0;

async function unstableTask() {
  count++;
  if (count < 3) throw new Error("Failed attempt " + count);
  return "Success on attempt " + count;
}

retry(unstableTask, { retries: 5, delay: 500 })
  .then(console.log)
  .catch(console.error);

Output:

Success on attempt 3

With Exponential Backoff

retry(unstableTask, { retries: 5, delay: 500, backoff: true })
  .then(console.log)
  .catch(console.error);

Backoff behavior:

• 1st retry → 500ms
• 2nd retry → 1000ms
• 3rd retry → 2000ms
• 4th retry → 4000ms

API

retry(fn, options)

| Parameter | Type | Default | Description | |-----------|------|---------|-------------| | fn | Function | — | The async function (returns a Promise) to retry. | | options | Object | {} | Configuration object. | | options.retries | Number | 3 | Maximum number of retries. | | options.delay | Number | 1000 | Base delay between retries (in ms). | | options.backoff | Boolean | false | If true, enables exponential backoff. |

Returns: Promise<any> — resolves if the function succeeds, rejects if all retries fail.

Example Use Cases

• Retrying network requests that may fail due to temporary issues.
• Retrying database queries when the connection is unstable.
• Any async operation where transient failures are possible.

Installation & Usage Notes

• Works in Node.js (CommonJS/ESM) and modern React projects.
• For Node.js ESM projects:

  import retry from "retry-promise-lite";

• For CommonJS (if you later support it):

  const retry = require("retry-promise-lite");

License

MIT © Asad Rehman