JavaScript- Promises

Posted by admin at January 14, 2020

The promise constructor takes one argument, a callback with two parameters, resolve and reject. Do something within the callback, perhaps async, then call resolve if everything worked, otherwise call reject.

How Promise Work

A promise is an object which can be returned synchronously from an asynchronous function. It will be in one of 3 possible states:

• Fulfilled: onFulfilled() will be called (e.g., resolve() was called)
• Rejected: onRejected() will be called (e.g., reject() was called)
• Pending: not yet fulfilled or rejected

A promise is settled if it’s not pending (it has been resolved or rejected). Sometimes people use resolved and settled to mean the same thing: not pending.

Once settled, a promise can not be resettled. Calling resolve() or reject() again will have no effect. The immutability of a settled promise is an important feature.

This is a real-life analogy for things we often have in programming:

1. A “producing code” that does something and takes time. For instance, some code that loads the data over a network. That’s a “singer”.
2. A “consuming code” that wants the result of the “producing code” once it’s ready. Many functions may need that result. These are the “fans”.
3. A promise is a special JavaScript object that links the “producing code” and the “consuming code” together. In terms of our analogy: this is the “subscription list”. The “producing code” takes whatever time it needs to produce the promised result, and the “promise” makes that result available to all of the subscribed code when it’s ready.

Demo

const promise1 = new Promise(function(resolve, reject) {
  setTimeout(function() {
    resolve('foo');
  }, 300);
});

promise1.then(function(value) {
  console.log(value);
  // expected output: "foo"
});

console.log(promise1);
// expected output: [object Promise]

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