Response doesn't wait for async function - node.js

Question

I found the aproach how to put the async function into a router endpoint and tried to implement it but not suceed. E.g. this link zellwk.com
The server sends only empty string instead of a huge string that is on snippet.host.
async function downloadData(url) {
const options = {
'method': 'GET', 'url': url, 'headers': {}, formData: {}
};
let result = '';
await request(options, function (error, response) {
if (error) throw new Error(error);
console.log(response.body)
result = response.body
});
return {error: 0, text: result}
}
app.get('/token/:token', jsonParser, async function (req, res) {
console.log(req.params.token) //Don't mind this token
try {
let message = await downloadData('https://snippet.host/xgsh/raw')
res.send(message)
} catch (e) {
console.log(e);
res.sendStatus(500);
}
});
How to make it wait for the download?
EDIT
I implemented node-fetch and got this:
{"error":0,"text":{"size":0}}
What did I wrong?
async function downloadData(url) {
const result = await fetch(url)
return {error: 0, text: result}
}
app.get('/token/:token', jsonParser, async function (req, res) {
console.log(req.params.token)
try {
let message = await downloadData('https://snippet.host/xgsh/raw')
res.send(message)
} catch (e) {
console.log(e);
res.sendStatus(500);
}
});

Answer 1

in case of fetch call the response body need to be parsed first which you are missing.
async function downloadData(url) {
const res = await fetch(url)
if (res && res.status != 200)
throw new Error("status code other than 200 received")
let json = await res.json()
return {error: 0, text: json}
}
app.get('/token/:token', async function (req, res) {
console.log(req.params.token)
try {
let message = await downloadData('https://snippet.host/xgsh/raw')
// let json = await message.json()
res.send(message)
} catch (e) {
console.log(e);
res.sendStatus(500);
}
});
i tried calling the api but every time it is returning 404 . so json cant be called in that case. but if 200 is returned then you call json and return that accordingly.

Answer 2

You can only usefully await a promise.
request doesn't return a promise, it takes a callback function instead.
This is one of the reasons that request was deprecated two years ago.
Replace request with something which supports promises such as node-fetch, the native fetch that was added to Node.js recently, or axios.

Answer 3

In case you must use request (eventhough it's deprecated); or in case you find a similar situation with a old function that doesn't return a promise; you can turn your request into a function that returns a promise.
Either write your own wrapper, in the form of
function requestPromise(options) {
return new Promise(
(resolve,reject) => request(options,
(err,response) => if (err) reject(err) else resolve(response)));
}
or, given that request's callback is in the form of function(err,response), directly use util.promisify
async function xxxx(...) {
try {
...
let response = await util.promisify(request)(options);
...
}

Answer 4

Because request isn't actually an async function that returns a Promise, you can create your own async version of request.
function asyncRequest(options) {
return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
request(options, (err, response) => {
if (err) {
reject(err)
} else {
resolve(response)
}
})
})
}
Then in your project rewrite your downloadData function to be:
async function downloadData(url) {
const options = {
method: "GET",
url: url,
headers: {},
formData: {},
}
const result = await asyncRequest(options)
return { error: 0, text: result.body }
}