How to "await" for a callback to return?

Question

async/await is not magic. An async function is a function that can unwrap Promises for you, so you'll need api.on() to return a Promise for that to work. Something like this:

function apiOn(event) {
  return new Promise(resolve => {
    api.on(event, response => resolve(response));
  });
}

Then

async function test() {
  return await apiOn( 'someEvent' ); // await is actually optional here
                                      // you'd return a Promise either way.
}

---

But that's a lie too, because async functions also return Promises themselves, so you aren't going to actually get the value out of test(), but rather, a Promise for a value, which you can use like so:

async function whatever() {
  // snip
  const response = await test();
  // use response here
  // snip
}

It's annoying that there isn't a straightforward solution, and wrapping return new Promise(...) is fugly, but I have found an ok work-around using util.promisify (actually it also kinda does the same wrapping, just looks nicer).

function voidFunction(someArgs, callback) {
  api.onActionwhichTakesTime(someMoreArgs, (response_we_need) => {
    callback(null, response_we_need);
  });
}

The above function does not return anything, yet. We can make it return a Promise of the response passed in callback by doing:

const util = require('util');

const asyncFunction = util.promisify(voidFunction);

Now we can actually await the callback.

async function test() {
  return await asyncFunction(args);
}

Some rules when using util.promisify

• The callback must be the last argument of the function that is gonna be promisify
• The supposed-callback must be in the form (err, res) => {...}

Funny thing is we do not need to ever specifically write what's the callback actually is.

async/await is magic. You can create a function asPromise to handle this kind of situations:

function asPromise(context, callbackFunction, ...args) {
    return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
        args.push((err, data) => {
            if (err) {
                reject(err);
            } else {
                resolve(data);
            }
        });
        if (context) {
            callbackFunction.call(context, ...args);
        } else {
            callbackFunction(...args);
        }
    });
}

and then use it when you want:

async test() {
    return await this.asPromise(this, api.on, 'someEvent');
}

the number of args is variable.

You can achieve this without callbacks , use promise async await instead of callbacks here how I would do this. And also here I have illustrated two methods to handle errors

clickMe = async (value) => {
  
  // begin to wait till the message gets here;
  let {message, error} = await getMessage(value);
  
  // if error is not null
  if(error)
    return console.log('error occured ' + error);
   
  return console.log('message ' + message);

}

getMessage = (value) => {

  //returning a promise 
  return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
  
    setTimeout(() => {
      // if passed value is 1 then it is a success
      if(value == 1){
        resolve({message: "**success**", error: null});
      }else if (value == 2){
        resolve({message: null, error: "**error**"});
      }
    }, 1000);
  
  });

}

clickWithTryCatch = async (value) => {

  try{
    //since promise reject in getMessage2 
    let message = await getMessage2(value);
    console.log('message is ' + message);
  }catch(e){
    //catching rejects from the promise
    console.log('error captured ' + e);
  }

}

getMessage2 = (value) => {

  return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
  
    setTimeout(() => {
      if(value == 1)
        resolve('**success**');
      else if(value == 2)
        reject('**error**'); 
    }, 1000);
  
  });

}

<input type='button' value='click to trigger for a value' onclick='clickMe(1)' />
<br/>
<input type='button' value='click to trigger an error' onclick='clickMe(2)' />
<br/>
<input type='button' value='handling errors with try catch' onclick='clickWithTryCatch(1)'/>
<br/>
<input type='button' value='handling errors with try catch' onclick='clickWithTryCatch(2)'/>