Returning a value of a function with Promise object [duplicate]

Question

I am wring a getWebContent function that returns the content of a webpage using Promise (I am also using Request module).

The way I'd like to use this function is var content = getWebContent(), so that content variable contains the data of the requested website. I started as follows:

var request = require('request')

var getWebContent = function () {
    
    target = 'http://www.google.com';
    var result = null;
    var get = function (url) {
        return new Promise(function (resolve, reject) {
            function reqCallback(err, res, body) {
                if (err) reject(err);
                else resolve(body);
            };
            request(url, reqCallback);
        });
    };

    get(target).then(function (res) {
        result = res;
        console.log(res);
    });
    
    return result;
};

var goog = getWebContent();
console.log(goog)

However, this code does not work, because the function returns result variable, which is null, before the Promise object is resolved. Could you please let me know how I should fix my code so that it works as intended?

Answer 1

You need to use Promise anyway. You cannot make a synchronous result out of an asynchronous operation in Javascript.

var request = require('request')

var getWebContent = function () {

    target = 'http://www.google.com';
    var result = null;
    var get = function (url) {
        return new Promise(function (resolve, reject) {
            function reqCallback(err, res, body) {
                if (err) reject(err);
                else resolve(body);
            };
            request(url, reqCallback);
        });
    };

    return get(target);
};

var goog = getWebContent().then(function (res) {
  console.log(goog);  
});