Node.js: How to run asynchronous code sequentially

Question

I have this chunk of code

User.find({}, function(err, users) {
    for (var i = 0; i < users.length; i++) {
        pseudocode
        Friend.find({
              


        

Answer 1

Note: I think the number of queries you are doing within a handler is a code smell. This problem is probably better solved at the query level. That said, let's proceed!

It's hard to know exactly what you want, because your psuedocode could use a cleanup IMHO, but I'm going to what you want to do is this:

1. Get all users, and for each user a. get all the user's friends and for each friend:
   • send a post request if the user has a website account
   • send an email
2. Do something after the process has finished

You can do this many different ways. Vanilla callbacks or async work great; I'm going to advocate for promises because they are the future, and library support is quite good. I'll use rsvp, because it is light, but any Promise/A+ compliant library will do the trick.

// helpers to simulate async calls
var User = {}, Friend = {}, request = {};
var asyncTask = User.find = Friend.find = request.post = function (cb) {
  setTimeout(function () {
    var result = [1, 2, 3];
    cb(null, result);
  }, 10);
};

User.find(function (err, usersResults) {
  // we reduce over the results, creating a "chain" of promises
  // that we can .then off of
  var userTask = usersResults.reduce(function (outerChain, outerResult) {
    return outerChain.then(function (outerValue) {
      // since we do not care about the return value or order
      // of the asynchronous calls here, we just nest them
      // and resolve our promise when they are done
      return new RSVP.Promise(function (resolveFriend, reject){
        Friend.find(function (err, friendResults) {
          friendResults.forEach(function (result) {
            request.post(function(err, finalResult) {
              resolveFriend(outerValue + '\n finished user' +  outerResult);
            }, true);
          });
        });
      });
    });
  }, RSVP.Promise.resolve(''));

  // handle success
  userTask.then(function (res) {
    document.body.textContent = res;
  });

  // handle errors
  userTask.catch(function (err) {
    console.log(error);
  });
});

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