Why is 'axios.get' returning a promise object?

Question

I've been trying to use Axios in order to check whether or not a user is authenticated server side (Node+Express+Passport).

If a user is authenticated, the server sends back a "Connected" string, else, it sends back a "Not connected" string.

Router.get('/isAuth', function (req, res, next) {
    if (req.isAuthenticated()) {
        return res.status(200).send('Connected');
    } else {
        return res.status(200).send('Not connected');
    }
});

I wrote a simple function to check the server's response:

function isAuth() {
  return axios.get('http://localhost:3000/endpoints/isAuth')
  .then((response) => {
    if (response.data === "Connected") {
      return true;
    } else {
      return false;
    }
  })
  .catch((error) => {
    console.log(error)
  })
}

The function is supposed to return true if the user is connected, and vice-versa.

Now, when I try to log the the function's results in the console, this is what I get:

Promise {[[PromiseStatus]]: "pending", [[PromiseValue]]: undefined}
  __proto__ : Promise
  [[PromiseStatus]] : "resolved"
  [[PromiseValue]] : false

As you can see, the value returned is a promise object, whereas the desired output would preferably be a "True" or "False".

Answer 1

isAuth does an async request which will take some time. therefore it cannot return true or false directly. it will instead return a promise that gets that boolean value. to access your boolean value, you have to treat your isAuth() function as a promise:

isAuth().then(isAuthenticated => console.log(isAuthenticated));

Update:

this code:

var test = isAuth();

will return the promise syncronously and won't wait for the reponse result

if you want to access the reponse of the promise, you need to use then:

test.then(value => ...);

if you really want to do a syncronous http request (blocks your app, untill the request is resolved) you can checkout https://github.com/ForbesLindesay/sync-request

but you actually don't want to use if it is not for test purpose only.

another thing you could consider is the use of async/await which comes with node 7.6 but you first should fully understand the concept of promises