Why would JavaScript Promises sometimes neither use .catch nor use .then? - javascript

This could be a question with a zillion answers or you'll otherwise need to see my actual code to help me. And it could be that there's one cause (or a small number of causes) for the behavior I'm seeing. First question: Which is it? If the former, I'll withdraw the question so people don't waste their time. I cannot share the code and it's longer than is appropriate here anyway.
I'm writing JavaScript in Node.JS using bluebird for Promises. Parts of my code fit this model.
const Promise = require('bluebird');
function a() {
return new Promise(function(resolve, reject) {
<... do something>
<either> return resolve();
<or> return reject();
})
}
a()
.catch(error => { console.log('Used .catch error=', error) })
.then(result => { console.log('Used .then result=', result) });
In some parts of my code fitting this model, I see the results of one of the log statements. In other parts of my code fitting this model, I see neither. In the latter parts, when I trace execution path with the debugger, after it finishes with a, it puts the green highlight on (error in .catch(error => { and next on } closing a Promise that contains a, its .then, and its .catch, and next (after going through some bluebird code) on } closing a function that contains that same Promise.
JSHint doesn't identify anything related.
I saw very similar behavior when I was using native Promises. I solved it then by substituting bluebird Promises. Now I see bluebird doing the same, though in different places.
If this is something with a known and easily described cause, I'll really appreciate the help. If it's bigger than that, this question probably doesn't belong on Stack Overflow; I'll withdraw it.
Thanks in advance.

Ok, let's start with something completely different. Chances are you should never be using the promise constructor, ever.
The promise constructor is for converting things that are not promise returning into things that are promise returning. If you're using bluebird, you should be using Promise.promisifyAll to do that swiftly and efficiently for you.
Promises are about making your life easier not harder. Writing a ton of boilerplate would beat this purpose. It is likely some frustrating is caused from incorrectly converting a callback API. This is hard to get right - for example, the promise constructor completely ignores return values.
Your code uses catch which recovers from errors. A little like:
try {
var result = doSomething();
} catch (error) {
console.log('Used .catch error=', error);
}
console.log('Used .then result=', result);
Using .catch means you recover from the errors. It means your code can gracefully handle exceptional conditions. If you need to signal in a catch that your code does not recover from the error - you need to rethrow the exception:
.catch(e => { console.log("Got ", e); throw e; })
Since you're using bluebird and modern Node - might I suggest taking a look at generators? http://bluebirdjs.com/docs/api/promise.coroutine.html

Related

Why should I return from a .then() in every case?

I'm using ESLint and I get this error: Each then() should return a value or throw promise/always-return
Code:
return somePromise.then(result => {
console.log(result);
}).catch(error => {
console.error(error);
});
Why should I return from this promise? There is clearly no need for it because I only wanted to print the result in the log and that's it. This rule seems wrong to apply in all cases.
I'm writing a Firebase database trigger which I believe is only interested in knowing whether the promise has resolved or not.
This eslint-plugin-promise rule exists to prevent mistakes caused by promises not being chained:
return somePromise.then(result => {
anotherPromise.then(...);
});
If you believe you cannot benefit from this rule and it only makes your code cluttered with extra return statements or eslint-disable-* comments, disable it.
Bluebird is known for preventing such mistakes, it produces a warning in case there's nested unchained promise.

JavaScript Promise: Reject handler vs catch [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
When is .then(success, fail) considered an antipattern for promises?
(7 answers)
Closed 4 years ago.
I have come across multiple applications where using catch is preferred over rejectHandler.
Eg:
Preferring
new Promise.then(resolveHandler).catch()
instead of
new Promise().then(resolveHandler, rejectHandler).catch()
Is there a particular reason for this??
I find
new Promise().then(resolveHandler, rejectHandler).catch()
to be more useful because
I can use rejectHandler to address designed/expected error scenario where Promise.reject is called.
I can use catch block to address unknown/unexpected programming/runtime errors that occur.
Does someone know any particular reason why rejectHandler is not used much?
P.S. I am aware of newer alternatives in ES6 but I just curious to know this.
Update: I KNOW HOW rejectHandler and catch works. The question is why do I see more people use only catch over both rejectHandler and catch? Is this a best practice or there is some advantage?
Update(Adding answer here): Found the answer I was looking for first hand.
The reason is not just because the error in reject is handled by catch it is mainly because of chaining. When we are chaining promise.then.then.then.then, having a resolve, reject pattern proves a bit tricky to chain it since you wouldn't want to implement a rejecthandler just to forward the rejectData up the chain. Using only promise/then/catch along with resolve/return/throw proves very useful in chaining N numbers of thenables.
#Bob-Fanger(accepted answer) addressed some part of this too.
Eg:
getData(id) {
return service.getData().then(dataList => {
const data = dataList.find(data => {
return data.id === id;
});
if (!data) {
// If I use Promise.reject here and use a reject handler in the parent then the parent might just be using the handler to route the error upwards in the chain
//If I use Promise.reject here and parent doesn't use reject handler then it goes to catch which can be just achieved using throw.
throw {
code: 404,
message: 'Data not present for this ID'
};
}
return configuration;
});
}
//somewhere up the chain
....getConfiguration()
.then(() => {
//successful promise execution
})
.catch(err => {
if (err.code) {
// checked exception
send(err);
} else {
//unchecked exception
send({
code: 500,
message: `Internal Server error: ${err}`
});
}
});
Using just these All I need to worry about is promise/then/catch along with resolve/return/throw anywhere in the chain.
The difference is that if an error occurs inside resolveHandler it won't be handled by the rejectHandler, that one only handles rejections in the original promise.
The rejectHandler is not used in combination with catch that much, because most of the time we only care about that something went wrong.
Creating only one errorhandler makes the code easier to reason about.
If a specific promise in the chain should handled differently that can be a reason to use a rejectHandler, but i'd probably write a catch().then().catch() in that case.
Neither is more useful than the other. Both the rejected handler and the catch callback are called when an error is thrown or a promise is rejected.
There is no "best practice" to use one over the other. You may see code use one or the other, but it's use will be based on what the code needs to achieve. The programmer may want to catch an error at different times in the chain and handle errors thrown at different times differently.
Hopefully the following will help explain what I mean:
somePromise
.then(
function() { /* code when somePromise has resolved */ },
function() {
/* code when somePromise has thrown or has been rejected.
An error thrown in the resolvedHandler
will NOT be handled by this callback */ }
);
somePromise
.then(
function() { /* code when somePromise has resolved */ }
)
.catch(
function() {
/* code when somePromise has thrown or has been rejected OR
when whatever has occurred in the .then
chained to somePromise has thrown or
the promise returned from it has been rejected */ }
);
Notice that in the first snippet, if the resolved handler throws then there is no rejected handler (or catch callback) that can catch the error. An error thrown in a resolved callback will not be caught by the rejectedHandler that is specified as the second argument to the .then
As stated in the post, provision of a resolve and reject handler in the same call to .then allows dealing with rejection of the previous promise separately from errors thrown within, or returning a rejected promise from, the success handler.
Because a rejection handler returning without throwing an error resumes the fufilled channel of a promise chain, a final catch handler will not be invoked if a previous rejection handler returns normally.
The question then devolves into use cases, cost of development and level of knowledge.
Use cases
In theory the two parameter form of then call could be used to retry an operation. But because hard coded promise chains are set up statically, retrying the operation is not simple. An easier way to retry might be to use an async function with try-catch statements surrounding await of a promise that may need to be retried as in this concept code:
async function() {
let retries = 3;
let failureErr = null;
while( retries--) {
try {
var result = await retryableOperationPromise()
return result;
}
catch( err) {
failureErr = err;
}
}
throw failureErr // no more retries
}
Other use cases may not be widespread.
Cost of development or commercial decisions.
If telling a user to retry later is acceptable it may be cheaper than doing anything about specific reasons for promise rejection. For example if I try to book a flight over midnight, when airlines put the prices up, I usually get told "an error occurred, try again later" because the price I was given at the start of booking will not be honored.
Knowledge (<opinion>)
I suspect that promise usage may often be based on example rather than in-depth knowledge of the subject. It is also possible program managers want to keep the code base as simple as possible for less experienced developers (probably a cost issue).
"Best practice" may not truly apply for making decisions on how to use promises if the usage is valid. Some developers and managers will avoid some forms of usage as a matter of principle, but not always based on technical merit.

Code works, but is it best practice to have a try/catch block inside a promise?

Is it good practice to wrap a try/catch with a Promise? I was reviewing the code below, I cannot seem to understand the necessity of having a try/catch block inside a Promise. Also, why would there be no place where the Promise rejects, as you can see in the catch block, the Promise resolves. Please help me understand this piece of code, in terms of best practice and efficiency the point of having the try/catch inside the Promise.
I would also really appreciate any suggestions regarding cleaning the code up where it is redundant.
getRoute(): any {
return async (request: any, reply: any) => {
const result = new Promise<string>( async (resolve, reject) => {
try {
let userIsValid = await this.validator.validate(request.payload, RegisterUserValidator);
if (userIsValid.error) {
resolve(responseHelper.getErrorResponse(ResponseErrorCode.joiValidatorError, userIsValid.error));
throw new ControlFlowNonError();
}
let results = await this.authUser.registerUser(request.payload);
resolve(responseHelper.getSuccessResponse(results, null));
}
catch (error) {
let message: ILogMessage = {
code: ResponseErrorCode.unknownError,
message: ResponseErrorCode.unknownError.toString(),
meta: error,
sourceFunction : 'ApiDataCreateCredentials: getRoute()'
};
this.logHelper.error(message);
resolve(error);
}
});
reply(result);
};
};
Is it best practice to have a try/catch block inside a promise [executor function]?
No, it's not best practice. There's pretty much no reason to use promises inside a promise executor function. Because when you're doing that, you don't need the outer, manually created promise at all. You can just return the inner promise. That's the Promise constructor anti-pattern.
FYI, though it isn't your case here, it is reasonable to use try/catch to handle regular exceptions inside a promise executor (if the manually created promise executor is actually needed in the first place and if regular exceptions are of concern and you want to handle them locally).
Here's another idea for how to accomplish your same logic. This removes the promise anti-pattern of surrounding a promise with another manually created one and uses promise flow control to make userIsValid.error go to the log error code. I didn't see any particular advantage of using await here so I switched back to just using .then() and .catch(). I don't know TypeScript so this is a regular Javascript version of the code, but you can presumably add the slight syntax differences yourself to turn it back to TypeScript:
getRoute(): function() {
return function(request, reply) {
return this.validator.validate(request.payload, RegisterUserValidator).then(userIsValid => {
if (userIsValid.error) {
// treat this as an error condition
throw responseHelper.getErrorResponse(ResponseErrorCode.joiValidatorError, userIsValid.error);
}
return this.authUser.registerUser(request.payload).then(results => responseHelper.getSuccessResponse(results, null));
}).catch(error => {
let message: ILogMessage = {
code: ResponseErrorCode.unknownError,
message: ResponseErrorCode.unknownError.toString(),
meta: error,
sourceFunction : 'ApiDataCreateCredentials: getRoute()'
};
this.logHelper.error(message);
// turn back into resolved promise with error as the result
return error;
}).then(reply); // always call reply
}
}
Things that did not seem ideal with your implementation:
Promise anti-pattern (creating an unnecessary wrapper promise).
Calling resolve() multiple times (the second one will be ignored, but it seems less than ideal to code it that way)
There does not seem to be any particular benefit to using async/await here. It seems to complicate the flow (in my opinion).
resolve() followed by throw is a real head scratcher when reading the code. Yes, one can eventually figure out what you're trying to do, but this is an odd way to do it. My scheme is a bit more semantic. if (userIsValid.error) is really just an error condition for you so coding it this way just makes that more obvious. Then, since you want ALL errors to proceed as if there was no error (after logging), we just make the .catch() handler return normally which allows the last .then() handler to always get called.
Other references related to your topic:
Can't throw error from within an async promise executor function
Is it an anti-pattern to use async/await inside of a new Promise() constructor?

Promise.catch is swallowing errors

I've done a lot of async coding in Node.js with callbacks and the excellent async library which works great. I'm trying to use a module that uses promises but I'm running into a problem where any errors thrown AFTER the promise are still bubbled up and caught by the promise error handler.
This makes it very difficult to debug errors as I have no idea where they will pop up and they can't be thrown and don't crash the app.
Example code below; all I want to do is to exit the promise chain and leave it behind once it has been resolved, rather than it catching all subsequent errors that aren't anything to do with it.
function one (input, callback) {
doSomeAsyncWork(input)
.then(function (result) {
return callback(null, result);
})
.catch(function (err) {
logError(err);
return callback(err);
});
}
function two (err, result) {
if (err) { ... }
var x = callAMethodThatThrows();
...
}
one('abc', two);
In this example, the method callAMethodThatThrows() throws an error, which gets bubbled up to the promise catch() block. This prevents the app from crashing and leaves it in an unknown state.
Any advice would be really appreciated, thanks.
Yes, sorry about that - we're getting to fixing(1) the default behavior in Node. In the meanwhile I specced and Petka added (with support from others) a hook for finding these errors:
process.on("unhandledRejection", (err, p) => {
console.error(err); // print the error
});
Note that this might catch some false negatives if you're performing .catch asynchronously itself - in my experience that's very rare.
Also note that with promises your server typically isn't in an unknown state and you can and should attempt to recover from errors when it makes sense. Since promises all the way means throw-safe code you can have fine grained error handling.
Note that promises make the async library largely unneeded. If you still wish to use callbacks and just wish "those pesky promises" would leave you alone and let you keep writing callbacks, that's fine - promises are throw safe but you can escape that by executing things off the promise code:
myPromiseFn().then(v => {
process.nextTick(() => cb(null, v)); // next tick, to escape the chain
}, e => process.nextTick(() => cb(e));
Note that fair promise libraries also come with a asCallback callback for converting the promise code to a node err-back callback.
(1) Some people claim there is no problem, go figure
Thanks to Ben's answer I discovered it's possible to convert a promise to a callback using a module such as nodeify. This allows us to keep all our code using callbacks, and avoids errors getting swallowed by the promise. Very useful.

How to reject (and properly use) Promises?

Short story:
Talking about Promises/A+, what is the proper way to reject a promise - throwing an error? But if I miss the catch - my whole app will blow!
How to use promisify and what are the benefits of it (maybe you'll need to read the longer version)?
Is .then(success, fail) really an anti-pattern and should I always use .then(success).catch(error)?
Longer version, described as real life problem (would love someone to read):
I have a library that uses Bluebird (A+ Promise implementation library), to fetch data from database (talking about Sequelize). Every query returns a result, but sometimes it's empty (tried to select something, but there wasn't any). The promise goes into the result function, because there is no reason for an error (not having results is not an error). Example:
Entity.find(1).then(function(result) {
// always ending here, despite result is {}
}).catch(function(error) {
// never ends here
});
I want to wrap this and check if the result is empty (can't check this everywhere in my code). I did this:
function findFirst() {
return Entity.find(1).then(function(result) {
if (result) { // add proper checks if needed
return result; // will invoke the success function
} else {
// I WANT TO INVOKE THE ERROR, HOW?! :)
}
}).catch(function(error) {
// never ends here
});
}
findFirst().then(function(result) {
// I HAVE a result
}).catch(function(error) {
// ERROR function - there's either sql error OR there is no result!
});
If you are still with me - I hope you will understand what's up. I want somehow to fire up the error function (where "ERROR function" is). The thing is - I don't know how. I've tried these things:
this.reject('reason'); // doesn't work, this is not a promise, Sequelize related
return new Error('reason'); // calls success function, with error argument
return false; // calls success function with false argument
throw new Error('reason'); // works, but if .catch is missing => BLOW!
As you can see by my comments (and per spec), throwing an error works well. But, there's a big but - if I miss the .catch statement, my whole app blows up.
Why I don't want this? Let's say I want to increment a counter in my database. I don't care about the result - I just make HTTP request.. So I can call incrementInDB(), which has the ability to return results (even for test reasons), so there is throw new Error if it failed. But since I don't care for response, sometimes I won't add .catch statement, right? But now - if I don't (on purpose or by fault) - I end up with your node app down.
I don't find this very nice. Is there any better way to work it out, or I just have to deal with it?
A friend of mine helped me out and I used a new promise to fix things up, like this:
function findFirst() {
var deferred = new Promise.pending(); // doesnt' matter if it's Bluebird or Q, just defer
Entity.find(1).then(function(result) {
if (result) { // add proper checks if needed
deferred.resolve(result);
} else {
deferred.reject('no result');
}
}).catch(function(error) {
deferred.reject('mysql error');
);
return deferred.promise; // return a promise, no matter of framework
}
Works like a charm! But I got into this: Promise Anti Patterns - wiki article written by Petka Antonov, creator of Bluebird (A+ implementation). It's explicitly said that this is wrong.
So my second question is - is it so? If yes - why? And what's the best way?
Thanks a lot for reading this, I hope someone will spent time to answer it for me :) I should add that I didn't want to depend too much on frameworks, so Sequelize and Bluebird are just things that I ended up working with. My problem is with Promises as a global, not with this particular frameworks.
Please ask only a single question per post :-)
Is .then(success, fail) really an anti-pattern and should I always use .then(success).catch(error)?
No. They just do different things, but once you know that you can choose the appropriate one.
How to use promisify and what are the benefits of it?
I think the Bluebird Promisification docs explain this pretty well - it's used to convert a callback api to one that returns promises.
Talking about Promises/A+, what is the proper way to reject a promise - throwing an error?
Yes, throwing an error is totally fine. Inside a then callback, you can throw and it will be caught automatically, resulting to the rejection of the result promise.
You can also use return Promise.reject(new Error(…));; both will have absolutely the same effect.
A friend of mine helped me out and I used a new promise to fix things up, like this: […]
No. You really shouldn't use that. Just use then and throw or return a rejected promise in there.
But if I miss the catch statement - my whole app will blow!
No, it won't. Notice that .catch() method is not a try catch statement - the error will already be caught where your then callback was invoked. It is then only passed to the catch callback as an argument, the .catch() call is not required to capture exceptions.
And when you miss .catch(), your app won't blow. All what happens is that you have a rejected promise laying around, the rest of your app won't be affected by this. You will get an unhandled rejection event, which can be dealt with globally.
Of course, that should not happen; every promise chain (not every promise instance) should be ended with a .catch() that handles errors appropriately. But you definitely don't need .catch() in every helper function, when it returns a promise to somewhere else then errors will usually be handled by the caller.
Talking about Promises/A+, what is the proper way to reject a promise - throwing an error? But if I miss the catch - my whole app will blow!
And if you use return codes to signal errors instead of exceptions, missing the check will cause subtle bugs and erratic behavior. Forgetting to handle errors is a bug, but having your app blow up in such an unfortunate case is more often better than letting it continue in corrupted state.
Debugging forgotten error code check that is only apparent by the application behaving weirdly at some unrelated-to-the-source-of-error place is easily many orders of magnitude more expensive than debugging a forgotten catch because you have the error message, source of error and stack trace. So if you want productivity in typical application development scenario, exceptions win by a pretty huge margin.
.then(success, fail)
This is usually signal that you are using promises as glorified callbacks where the callbacks are simply passed separately. This is obviously an anti-pattern as you will not get any benefits from using promises in this way. If that's not the case, even then you are just making your code slightly less readable compared to using .catch(), similar to how method(true, true, false) is much less readable than method({option1: true, option2: true, option3: false}).
How to use promisify and what are the benefits of it (maybe you'll need to read the longer version)?
Most modules only expose a callback interface, promisify turns a callback interface automatically into a promise interface. If you are writing such code manually (using deferred or new Promise), you are wasting your time.
So my second question is - is it so? If yes - why? And what's the best way?
The best way is to chain the promise:
function findFirst() {
return Entity.find(1).tap(function(result) {
if (!result) throw new Error("no result");
});
}
It's better because it's simpler, shorter, more readable and far less error-prone way to do exactly the same thing.

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