Using async/await recursively with node request package - node.js

Question

I'm making an http request using the response node library and I am trying to call it recursively (If the user made a commit on one day, check the previous day. If not, count up all the days to get the streak).
The problem is that the line
const githubResponse = await request(options);
Spits out the error
Unexpected token o in JSON at position 1
await request(options) doesn't seem to return the JSON GitHub API response I am expecting, but instead githubResponse seems to be an object that I can't use. I'm guessing I'm using async/await improperly, but I'm not sure how to fix it.
async function checkUserCommitForDate(user, date) {
const options = {
url: `https://api.github.com/search/commits?q=author:${user}+author-date:${date}`,
headers: {
'User-Agent': 'request',
'Accept': 'application/vnd.github.cloak-preview'
}
};
const githubResponse = await request(options)
// I get an error on the next line
if (JSON.parse(githubResponse).total_count > 0) {
const previousDaysDate = moment(date).subtract(1, 'day').format('YYYY-MM-DD');
let streakCounter = await checkUserCommitForDate(user, previousDaysDate);
streakCounter++;
console.log('streakCounter', streakCounter);
return streakCounter;
} else {
return 0;
}
}
UPDATE: It seems like this is not a promise, so I need to format this differently (as a callback). When I try this:
async function checkUserCommitForDate(user, date) {
const options = {
url: `https://api.github.com/search/commits?q=author:${user}+author-date:${date}`,
headers: {
'User-Agent': 'request',
'Accept': 'application/vnd.github.cloak-preview'
}
};
request(options, async function (error, response, body) {
console.log('error:', error); // Print the error if one occurred
if (JSON.parse(body).total_count > 0) {
const previousDaysDate = moment(date).subtract(1, 'day').format('YYYY-MM-DD');
let streakCounter = await checkUserCommitForDate(user, previousDaysDate);
streakCounter++;
console.log('streakCounter', streakCounter);
return streakCounter;
} else {
return 0;
}
});
}
The line
let streakCounter = await checkUserCommitForDate(user, previousDaysDate);
becomes the problem as streakCounter is undefined, making the log NaN.

Answer 1

As said in the comments request uses callbacks instead of returning a promise and you dont really need to promisify it by yourself since there's already a pacakge for that called request-promise.
Using it in your code should directly work out of the box with async/await

Answer 2

I used promisify example from here to convert it to this and it worked!
async function checkUserCommitForDate(user, date) {
const options = {
url: `https://api.github.com/search/commits?q=author:${user}+author-date:${date}`,
headers: {
'User-Agent': 'request',
'Accept': 'application/vnd.github.cloak-preview'
}
};
const githubResponse = await promisify(request)(options);
if (JSON.parse(githubResponse.body).total_count > 0) {
const previousDaysDate = moment(date).subtract(1, 'day').format('YYYY-MM-DD');
let streakCounter = await checkUserCommitForDate(user, previousDaysDate);
streakCounter++;
console.log('streakCounter', streakCounter);
return streakCounter;
} else {
return 0;
}
}
function promisify(fn) {
return function (...args) {
return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
fn(...args, (err, result) => {
if (err) return reject(err);
resolve(result);
});
});
};
};

Answer 3

If you are upgraded to Node 8 LTS, then native util.promisfy can be used as below:
const { promisify } = require('util')
const request = promisify(require('request'))
async function checkUserCommitForDate(user, date) {
const options = {
url: `https://api.github.com/search/commits?q=author:${user}+author-date:${date}`,
headers: {
'User-Agent': 'request',
'Accept': 'application/vnd.github.cloak-preview',
'json':true
}
};
try{
const githubResponse = await request(options);
if (githubResponse.body.total_count > 0) {
const previousDaysDate = moment(date).subtract(1, 'day').format('YYYY-MM-DD');
let streakCounter = await checkUserCommitForDate(user, previousDaysDate);
streakCounter++;
console.log('streakCounter', streakCounter);
return streakCounter;
} else {
return 0;
}
}
catch(err){
console.error(err)
return 0;
}
}
Using json:true in the options, will reduce another step to parse as the response will be in JSON format.