Finish

Finish is a high performance nodejs flow control utility that captures completion of multiple asynchronous calls with a single callback.

Installation

You can install using Node Package Manager (npm):

npm install finish

Quick Examples

var finish = require("finish");
finish(function(async) {
  // Any asynchronous calls within this function will be captured
  // Just wrap each asynchronous call with function 'async'.
  // Each asynchronous call should invoke 'done' as its callback.
  // 'done' tasks two arguments: error and result.
  async(function(done) { fs.readFile('hello.txt', done); }
  async(function(done) { fs.readFile('world.txt', done); }
}, function(err, results) {
  // This callback is invoked after all asynchronous calls finish
  // or as soon as an error occurs
  // results is an array that contains result of each asynchronous call
  console.log(results[0], results[1]);
});

API

Finish provides four APIs:

finish(func[, reducer[, initialValue]], callback);
finish.map(array, async[, reducer[, initialValue]], callback);
finish.ordered(func[, reducer[, initialValue]], callback);
finish.ordered.map(array, async[, reducer[, initialValue]], callback);

finish

Syntax

finish(func[, reducer[, initialValue]], callback)

Parameters

• func: function that makes asynchronous calls, taking one argument:
  • async([key, ]done): wrapper function that wraps an asynchronous call.
    • key(optional): If provided, result of this call will be added as a property key of the final results object. (See below.)
    • done: callback function for individual asynchronous calls, taking two arguments:
      • err: any truthy value of err will cause the final callback to be invoked immediately.
      • result: return value of the asynchronous call; it is captured by the final results.
• reducer(optional): reduction function to execute on each result, taking two arguments:
  • previousValue: The value previously returned in the last invocation of the reducer, or initialValue, if supplied.
  • currentValue: The current result returned by an asynchronous call.
  • key: the key associated with the async call if provided.
• initialValue(optional): Object to use as the first argument to the first call of the reducer. It omitted, the first result returned by any asynchronous call will be used as initialValue. This argument should only be used when an reducer is presented.
• callback: The final callback that will be invoked when all asynchronous calls complete or an error occured, taking two arguments:
  • err: If an error occured, err is the error. Otherwise, null.
  • results: An array of result objects returned by all asynchronous calls. The order of elements of results are not guaranteed (See finish.ordered if order guarantee is needed). If the optional key argument is used in the first async call, results will be an object with null as prototype; result will be properties of results.

Description

finish is the free form of finish utility. One should wrap each asynchronous call with async and the asynchronous call should invoke done as callback. Note that it is safe to pass an function to async that executes synchronous. result objects passed to done is collected into an array if the optional key parameter of async is not used. The order of result objects in results are not guaranteed. When key parameter is used in async, results will be an object that has null as prototype; each result will be an property in results at the associated key.

When using an reducer, the reducer is invoked at every done callback with (results, result) as arguments. The final results is the return value of the last invocation of reducer. The order of reducer invocation is not guaranteed. One should not use a reducer if key argument of async is used.

Examples

finish(function(async) {
  async(function(done) {
    setTimeout(function() { done(null, 1); }, 100);
  });
  async(function(done) {
    setTimeout(function() { done(null, 2); }, 100);
  });
}, function(err, results) {
  assert.equal(results, [ 1, 2 ]);
});
 
// "keyed" finish
finish(function(async) {
  async("one", function(done) {
    setTimeout(function() { done(null, 1); }, 100);
  });
  async("two", function(done) {
    setTimeout(function() { done(null, 2); }, 200);
  });
}, function(err, results) {
  assert.equal(results, { one: 1, two: 2 });
});
 
// with a reducer
finish(
  function(async) {
    async(function(done) {
      setTimeout(function() { done(null, 1); }, 100);
    });
    async(function(done) {
      setTimeout(function() { done(null, 2); }, 200);
    });
  },
  function(prev, curr) { return prev + curr; }, // reduction operator
  0, // initial value (can be omitted in this case)
  function(err, results) { assert.equal(results, 3); }
);

finish.map

Syntax

finish.map(array, async[, reducer[, initialValue]], callback)

Parameters

• array: An array of elements or an object.
• async: If array is an instance of Array, async will be invoked on every element of array. Otherwise, async will be invoked on array's own enumerable properties. Depends on how many arguments async expects, async is invoked with: (value, done), (value, index, done), and (value, index, array, done).
  • element: the value of the element or property;
  • index: the index of the element or the key of the property;
  • array: the array or object being traversed;
  • done: the callback function for the asynchronous call (Same as in finish).
• reducer(optional): Same reduce function as in finish. It takes four arguments:
  • previousValue: Same as in finish.
  • currentValue: Same as in finish.
  • index: The index of the corresponding element in array, or the property name of the corresponding property in array object.
  • array: The same array passed to finish.map.
• initialValue(optional): Same as in finish.
• callback: Same as in finish.

Descriptions

This is an syntactic sugar for finish. It maps the async function onto each element (or property, if array is not an instance of Array) of array. Like finish, the order of execution is not guaranteed either.

Examples

// map an array
finish.map([1, 2, 3], function(value, done) {
  setTimeout(function() { done(null, value); });
}, function(err, results) {
  assert.equal(results, [1, 2, 3]);
});
 
// map an object
finish.map({ one: 1, two: 2, three: 3}, function(value, done) {
  setTimeout(function() { done(null, value); });
}, function(err, results) {
  assert.equal(results, { one: 1, two: 2, three: 3 });
});

finish.ordered

Syntax

finish.ordered(func[, reducer[, initialValue]], callback)
finish.ordered.map(array, async[, reducer[, initialValue]], callback)

Description

These two functions is the same as finish and finish.map with the addition of order guarantee. The order of result objects in results are guaranteed to be the same as the order of invocation of asynchronous calls. If using a reducer, the reducer is invoked in the same order as the asynchronous calls spawned.

Why not use Async.parallel?

Async.parallel accepts an array of continuation functions and runs them in parallel. It also provides a callback function which is fired after all functions finish. Finish differs from async.parallel because it does not require user to pack asynchronous calls into an array to run them in parallel and track their completion. This gives you more flexibility and greatly reduce the lines of plateboiler code you need to write when using Async.parallel. Moreover, it increase parallelism, which gives you better performance.

Performance: finish vs. async.parallel

Examples folder contains an example which calculates a size of a directory, implemented in both finish and async.parallel. Here's how they perform on my macbook:

$ time node size.js $HOME
/Users/chaorany: 109295.691 MB

real  0m11.690s
user  0m11.956s
sys 0m20.838s

$ time node size-async.js $HOME
/Users/chaorany: 109295.691 MB

real  0m14.348s
user  0m14.679s
sys 0m21.068s