How to do repeated requests until one succeeds without blocking in node?

Question

I have a function that takes a parameter and a callback. It\'s supposed to do a request to a remote API and get some info based on the parameter. When it gets the info, it needs

Answer 1

Definitely not the way to go - while(!done); will go into a hard loop and take up all of your cpu.

Instead you could do something like this (untested and you may want to implement a back-off of some sort):

function tryUntilSuccess(options, callback) {
    var req = https.request(options, function(res) {
        var acc = "";
        res.on("data", function(msg) {
            acc += msg.toString("utf-8");
        });
        res.on("end", function() {
            var history = JSON.parse(acc);  //<== Protect this if you may not get JSON back
            if (history.success) {
                callback(null, history);
            } else {
                tryUntilSuccess(options, callback);
            }
        });
    });
    req.end();

    req.on('error', function(e) {
        // Decide what to do here
        // if error is recoverable
        //     tryUntilSuccess(options, callback);
        // else
        //     callback(e);
    });
}

// Use the standard callback pattern of err in first param, success in second
tryUntilSuccess(options, function(err, resp) {
    // Your code here...
});