What is the correct way to handle nested async await calls in Node? [duplicate]

Question

Trying to learn the async pattern in Javascript but it doesn't appear that it waits for the following line. In the following example, the collection is the request object and not the actual parsed body. Isn't await supposed to wait for the request to finish?

async function importUsers(endpoint) {     const options = {         data: search,         uri: endpointCollection,         headers,     }      try {         const collection = await browser.post(options, (err, res, body) => JSON.parse(body))         // collection is the request object instead of the result of the request         const users = await collection.data.forEach(item => parseUserProfile(item));          await users.forEach(user => saveUserInfo(user))     } catch(err) {         handleError(err)     } }    async function parseUserProfile({ username, userid }) {     const url = userProfileString(username)      try {         const profile = await browser.get(url, headers, (err, res, body) => {                return { ... } // data from the body         })     } catch(err) {         handleError(err)     } } 

Answer 1

Async/Await only works on functions that return (and resolve) a promise.

The following example will write to the console after 3 seconds, and then continue on.

// Tell the browser that this function is asynchronous  async function myFunc() {      // Await for the promise to resolve      await new Promise((resolve) => {          setTimeout(() => {              // Resolve the promise              resolve(console.log('hello'));          }, 3000);      });      // Once the promise gets resolved continue on      console.log('hi');  }    // Call the function  myFunc();

Without async/await, the output would be as follows:

hi hello 

Here is an example without async/await:

// Tell the browser that this function is asynchronous  async function myFunc() {      // Skip await      new Promise((resolve) => {          setTimeout(() => {              // Resolve the promise              resolve(console.log('hello'));          }, 3000);      });      // Since await was not used, this will print first      console.log('hi');  }    // Call the function  myFunc();

This would be because the hi output would run and then after 3 seconds the timeout would run.

But with async/await, the output looks like this:

hello hi 

This is because we await for the timeout then we run the hi output.

Answer 2

await should expect a promise, for a callback style async function, you can transform it like:

new Promise((resolve, reject) => browser.post(options, (err, res, body) => resolve(JSON.parse(body)))) 

For an array, you need to map it to an array of promises, then use Promise.all to turn it to a 'promise of array', for example:

Promise.all(collection.data.map(item => parseUserProfile(item)))