How to implement a lock in JavaScript

Question

How could something equivalent to lock in C# be implemented in JavaScript?

So, to explain what I\'m thinking a simple use case is:

User clicks

Answer 1

Lock is a questionable idea in JS which is intended to be threadless and not needing concurrency protection. You're looking to combine calls on deferred execution. The pattern I follow for this is the use of callbacks. Something like this:

var functionLock = false;
var functionCallbacks = [];
var lockingFunction = function (callback) {
    if (functionLock) {
        functionCallbacks.push(callback);
    } else {
        $.longRunning(function(response) {
             while(functionCallbacks.length){
                 var thisCallback = functionCallbacks.pop();
                 thisCallback(response);
             }
        });
    }
}

You can also implement this using DOM event listeners or a pubsub solution.

Answer 2

Here's a simple lock mechanism, implemented via closure

const createLock = () => {

    let lockStatus = false

    const release = () => {
        lockStatus = false
    }

    const acuire = () => {
        if (lockStatus == true)
            return false
        lockStatus = true
        return true
    }
    
    return {
        lockStatus: lockStatus, 
        acuire: acuire,
        release: release,
    }
}

lock = createLock() // create a lock
lock.acuire() // acuired a lock

if (lock.acuire()){
  console.log("Was able to acuire");
} else {
  console.log("Was not to acuire"); // This will execute
}

lock.release() // now the lock is released

if(lock.acuire()){
  console.log("Was able to acuire"); // This will execute
} else {
  console.log("Was not to acuire"); 
}

lock.release() // Hey don't forget to release