Promise waterfall

Question

I'm an API developer and typically write end-points requiring passing a result from one async call to another async call aka async waterfall.

I usually do this the following way using promises:

task1()

.then(result1){

    task2(result1)

    .then(result2){

        task3(result2)

        .then(result3){
            // API response
        })

        .catch(function(err){
            // Task 3 handle err
        })
    })

    .catch(function(err){
        // Task 2 handle err
    })
})

.catch(function(err){
    // Task 1 handle err
})

It's obvious that not much has been gained over using callbacks. Instead of "callback hell" I now got "promise hell".

I have looked at npm bluebird but it does not seem that waterfall promises are supported.

Sometimes I would use async and wrap tasks that return a promise:

const tasks = [

    job1: function(cb){

        task1()

        .then(function(result){
            cb(null, result);
        })

        .catch(function(err){
            cb(err);
        })  
    },

    job2: function(cb, result1){

        task2(result1)

        .then(function(result){
            cb(null, result);
        })

        .catch(function(err){
            cb(err);
        })  
    },

    job3: function(cb, result2){

        task3(result2)

        .then(function(result){
            cb(null, result);
        })

        .catch(function(err){
            cb(err);
        })  
    }
]

async.series(tasks, function(err, results){

    if(err){
        // handle error
    }

    // API callback
});

But this is also pretty useless. And if you're thinking about Promise.all that wont work since the result from one tasks is not passed on to the next.

What's the better approach?

Solution

You've got a promise anti pattern happening. You can return promises from promises to avoid nesting the promises like you've done.

promiseOne()
    .then(() => promiseTwo())
    .then(() => promiseThree())
    .then(() => promiseFour());

By the way Node supports the built in Promise constructor.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Promise

const promise = new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
    // do something and then resolve
    resolve();
})
promise().then(() => { ... });