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JavaScript Asynchronous Code in Express Asynchronous Code in Express Refactor Using Async/Await

Vitaly Khe
Vitaly Khe
7,160 Points

Why refactoring getQuotes to async/await doesn't work?

const getQuotes = async () =>  fileSystem.readFile('data.json', 'utf8', (err, data) => {
        if (err) {
             return err;
        }
        else {
            const quotes = JSON.parse(data);
            return quotes;
        }
    });

(async () => {
    const q = await getQuotes();
    console.log( q);
})();

Console:

Promise { undefined }

2 Answers

Brendan Whiting
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.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree seal-36
Brendan Whiting
Front End Web Development Techdegree Graduate 84,735 Points

The readFile method doesn't return anything. If you have a function that takes a callback, and you want it to return a promise, one strategy is to wrap it in a Promise constructor, which takes a function with two arguments, resolve and reject. You can call resolve() on the successful response and reject() on the error.

const getQuotes = () =>  {
    return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
        fileSystem.readFile('data.json', 'utf8', (err, data) => {
            if (err) {
                 return reject(err);
            } else {
                const quotes = JSON.parse(data);
                return resolve(quotes);
            }
        })
    })
}

You can also use a neat utility function called promisify

karan Badhwar
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karan Badhwar
Web Development Techdegree Graduate 18,135 Points

Hey Brendan Whiting, sorry to post a question to your answer so late. But she said transform the getUsers function into a promise if it wasn't one, if we add async in front of the function, then again why do we need to return a Promise, if it's gonna do that for us?