Asynchronous constructor

Question

How can I best handle a situation like the following?

I have a constructor that takes a while to complete.

var Element = function Element(name){
            


        

Answer 1

You can run constructor function with async functions synchronously via nsynjs. Here is an example to illustrate:

index.js (main app logic):

var nsynjs = require('nsynjs');
var modules = {
    MyObject: require('./MyObject')
};

function synchronousApp(modules) {
    try {
        var myObjectInstance1 = new modules.MyObject('data1.json');
        var myObjectInstance2 = new modules.MyObject('data2.json');

        console.log(myObjectInstance1.getData());
        console.log(myObjectInstance2.getData());
    }
    catch (e) {
        console.log("Error",e);
    }
}

nsynjs.run(synchronousApp,null,modules,function () {
        console.log('done');
});

MyObject.js (class definition with slow constructor):

var nsynjs = require('nsynjs');

var synchronousCode = function (wrappers) {
    var config;

    // constructor of MyObject
    var MyObject = function(fileName) {
        this.data = JSON.parse(wrappers.readFile(nsynjsCtx, fileName).data);
    };
    MyObject.prototype.getData = function () {
        return this.data;
    };
    return MyObject;
};

var wrappers = require('./wrappers');
nsynjs.run(synchronousCode,{},wrappers,function (m) {
    module.exports = m;
});

wrappers.js (nsynjs-aware wrapper around slow functions with callbacks):

var fs=require('fs');
exports.readFile = function (ctx,name) {
    var res={};
    fs.readFile( name, "utf8", function( error , configText ){
        if( error ) res.error = error;
        res.data = configText;
        ctx.resume(error);
    } );
    return res;
};
exports.readFile.nsynjsHasCallback = true;

Full set of files for this example could be found here: https://github.com/amaksr/nsynjs/tree/master/examples/node-async-constructor