Is wrapping a promise in a promise an anti-pattern?

Question

I was trying to write code for reconnecting to a database with a timeout using a Promise API.

What I ended up doing in the end was wrapping the promise to connect to

Answer 1

Here's a slightly more general solution (tests for non-positive):

function withRetry(asyncAction, retries) {
  if (retries <= 0) {
    // Promise.resolve to convert sync throws into rejections.
    return Promise.resolve().then(asyncAction); 
  }
  return Promise.resolve()
    .then(asyncAction)
    .catch(() => withRetry(asyncAction, retries - 1));
}

This function will take a function that returns a promise, and a number of retries, and retry the function as many times as retries, if the Promise rejects.

If it resolves, the retry chains stops.

In your case:

let connectionPromise = withRetry(connect, 3); // connect with 3 retries if fails.