I am putting up a web server in node.js,
in particular I am developing a module for orders management.
the module is wrapped inside an anonymous function
(function(){})();
if the "insertOrder" function I declare the variable order like this:
var order = {
user_id: '',
address_id: '',
payed: false,
accepted: false,
shipped: false
};
Then it gets populated with the values "returned" from the asynchronous functions i am calling that interact with the database.
This application is going to be used simultaneously by multiple clients.
Now, assuming that two users want to make an order, is the variable going to be re-initialized to the starting object every time the function get's called, overwriting the changes made during the first execution? Or is a context going to be spawned every time a client makes a call to the server?
I know this is not the case for node.js but still can't figure this one
out.
I.E.
is the variable value of the previous iteration gonna be kept somehow and used until the end of the first function call or lost as soon as the function gets called again?
Thank you very much.
EDIT: further explaination of the problem.
The user_id is is going to be used to retrieve the address that the order is going to be shipped to. A wrong user_id is going to result in the item shipped to the wrong address
If var order = { ... } is inside the insertOrder function, then every time the insertOrder function is called order will be reinitialized. The scope is isolated, so there should not be any mingling of local variables even in an asynchronous situation.
jsFiddle
Related
In Fastify.js you have at least to ways to register hooks: globally (via fastify.addHook()) or as a property inside the route declaration. In the example below I'm trying to use fastfy-multer to handle file uploading but the maximum amount of files must be limited by a setting associated with a "room". As the app has many rooms, most of the requests contain a reference to a room, and every time the request is being augmented with room settings by the preHandler hook.
import fastify from 'fastify'
import multer from 'fastify-multer'
const server = fastify()
server.register(multer.contentParser)
// For all requests containing the room ID, fetch the room options from the database
fastify.addHook('preHandler', async (request, reply) => {
if (request.body.roomID) {
const roomOptions = await getRoomOptions(request.body.roomID)
if (roomOptions) {
reuqest.body.room = roomOptions
}
else {
// handle an error if the room doesn't exist
}
}
})
server.post('/post', {
// Limit the maximum amount of files to be uploaded based on room options
preHandler: upload.array(files, request.body.room.maxFiles)
})
In order for this setup to work, the global hook must always be executed before the file upload hook. How can I guarantee that?
Summary: As #Manuel Spigolon said:
How can I guarantee that? The framework does it
Now we can take Manuel's word for it (SPOILER ALERT: they are absolutely correct), or we can prove how this works by looking in the source code on GitHub.
The first thing to keep in mind is that arrays in JavaScript are remain ordered by the way objects are pushed into them, but don’t take my word for it. That is all explained here if you want to dive a little deeper into the evidence. If that was not true, everything below doesn't matter and you could just stop reading now.
How addHook works
Now that we have established that arrays maintain their order, let look at how the addHook code is executed. We can start by looking at the default export of fastify in the fastify.js file located in the root directory. In this object if scoll down you'll see the addHook property defined. When we look into the addHook function implementation we can see that in that add hook call we are calling this[kHooks].add.
When we go back to see what the kHooks property is we see that it is a new Hooks(). When we go to take a look at the add method on the Hooks object, we can see that it just validates the hook that is being add and then [pushes] it to the array property on the Hooks object with the matching hook name. This shows that hooks will always be in the order which add was called for them.
How fastify.route adds hooks
I hope you're following to this point because that only proves the order of the addHook calls in the respective array on the Hooks object. The next question is how these interact with the calls of fastify.(get | post | route | ...) functions. We can walk through the fastify.get function, but they are all pretty much the same (you can do the same exercise with any of them). Looking at the get function, we see that the implementation is just calling the router.prepareRoute function. When you look into the prepareRoute implementation, you see that this function returns a call to the route function. In the route function there is a section where the hooks are set up. It looks like this:
for (const hook of lifecycleHooks) {
const toSet = this[kHooks][hook]
.concat(opts[hook] || [])
.map(h => h.bind(this))
context[hook] = toSet.length ? toSet : null
}
What this does is go through every lifecycle hook and turn it into a set of all the hooks from the Fastify instance (this) and the hooks in the options (opts[hook]) for that given hook and binds them to the fastify instance (this). This shows that the hooks in the options for the routes are always added after the addHook handlers.
How Fastify executes hooks
This is not everything we need though. Now we know the order in which the hooks are stored. But how exactly are they executed? For that we can look at the hookRunner function in the hooks.js file. We see this function acts as a sort of recursive loop that continues running as long as the handlers do not error. It first creates a variable i to keep track of the handler function it is currently on and then tries to execute it and increments the function tracker (i).
If the handler fails (handleReject), it runs a callback function and does not call the next function to continue. If the handler succeeds (handleResolve), it just runs the next function to try the same process on the following handler (functions[i++]) in the functions set.
Why does this matter
This proves that the hook handlers are called in the order that they were pushed into the ordered collection. In other words:
How can I guarantee that? The framework does it
I am a bit new to JavaScript web dev, and so am still getting my head around the flow of asynchronous functions, which can be a bit unexpected to the uninitiated. In my particular use case, I want execute a routine on the list of available databases before moving into the main code. Specifically, in order to ensure that a test environment is always properly initialized, I am dropping a database if it already exists, and then building it from configuration files.
The basic flow I have looks like this:
let dbAdmin = client.db("admin").admin();
dbAdmin.listDatabases(function(err, dbs){/*Loop through DBs and drop relevant one if present.*/});
return await buildRelevantDB();
By peppering some console.log() items throughout, I have determined that the listDatabases() call basically puts the callback into a queue of sorts. I actually enter buildRelevantDB() before entering the callback passed to listDatabases. In this particular example, it seems to work anyway, I think because the call that reads the configuration file is also asynchronous and so puts items into the same queue but later, but I find this to be brittle and sloppy. There must be some way to ensure that the listDatabases portion resolves before moving forward.
The closest solution I found is here, but I still don't know how to get the callback I pass to listDatabases to be like a then as in that solution.
Mixing callbacks and promises is a bit more advanced technique, so if you are new to javascript try to avoid it. In fact, try to avoid it even if you already learned everything and became a js ninja.
Dcumentation for listDatabases says it is async, so you can just await it without messing up with callbacks:
const dbs = await dbAdmin.listDatabases();
/*Loop through DBs and drop relevant one if present.*/
The next thing, there is no need to await before return. If you can await within a function, it is async and returns a promise anyway, so just return the promise from buildRelevantDB:
return buildRelevantDB();
Finally, you can drop database directly. No need to iterate over all databases to pick one you want to drop:
await client.db(<db name to drop>).dropDatabase();
I am new to Node.js, and I have been reading questions and answers related with this issue, but still not very sure if I fully understand the concept in my case.
Suggested Code
router.post('/test123', function(req, res) {
someAsyncFunction1(parameter1, function(result1) {
someAsyncFunction2(parameter2, function(result2) {
someAsyncFunction3(parameter3, function(result3) {
var theVariable1 = req.body.something1;
var theVariable2 = req.body.something2;
)}
)}
});
Question
I assume there will be multiple (can be 10+, 100+, or whatever) requests to one certain place (for example, ajax request to /test123, as shown above) at the same time with some variables (something1 and something2). According to this, it would be impossible that one user's theVariable1 and theVariable2 are mixed up with (i.e, overwritten by) the other user's req.body.something1 and req.body.something2. I am wondering if this is true when there are multiple callbacks (three like the above, or ten, just in case).
And, I also consider using res.locals to save some data from callbacks (instead of using theVariable1 and theVariable2, but is it good idea to do so given that the data will not be overwritten due to multiple simultaneous requests from clients?
Each request an Node.js/Express server gets generated a new req object.
So in the line router.post('/test123', function(req, res), the req object that's being passed in as an argument is unique to that HTTP connection.
You don't have to worry about multiple functions or callbacks. In a traditional application, if I have two objects cat and dog that I can pass to the listen function, I would get back meow and bark. Even though there's only one listen function. That's sort of how you can view an Express app. Even though you have all these get and post functions, every user's request is passed to them as a unique entity.
I just started developing nodejs. I'm confused to use async model. I believe there is a way to turn most of SYNC use cases into ASYNC way. Example, by SYNC, we load some data and wait until it returns then show them to user; by ASYNC, we load data and return, just tell the user data will be presented later. I can understand why ASYNC is used in this scenario.
But here I have a use case. I'm building an web app, allowing user to place a order (buying something). Before saving the order data into db, I want to put some user data together with order data (I'm using document NoSql db by the way). So I think by SYNC, after I get order data, I make a SYNC call to database and wait for its returned user data. After I get returned data, integrate them together and ingest into db.
I think there might be an issue if I make ASYNC call to db to query user data because user data may be returned after I save data to db. And that's not what I want.
So in this case, how can I do this thing ASYNCHRONOUSLY?
Couple of things here. First, if your application already has the user data (the user is already logged in), then this information should be stored in session so you don't have to access the DB. If you are allowing the user to register at the time of purchase, you would simply want to pass a callback function that handles saving the order into your call that saves the user data. Without knowing specifically what your code looks like, something like this is what you would be looking for.
function saveOrder(userData, orderData, callback) {
// save the user data to the DB
db.save(userData, function(rec) {
// if you need to add the user ID or something to the order...
orderData.userId = rec.id; // this would be dependent on your DB of choice
// save the order data to the DB
db.save(orderData, callback);
});
}
Sync code goes something like this. step by step - one after other. There can be ifs and loops (for) etc. all of us get it.
fetchUserDataFromDB();
integrateOrderDataAndUserData();
updateOrderData();
Think of async programming with nodejs as event driven. Like UI programming - code (function) is executed when an event occurs. E.g. On click event - framework calls back registered clickHandler.
nodejs async programming can also be thought on these lines. When db query (async) execution completes, your callback is called. When order data is updated, your callback is called. The above code goes something like this:
function nodejsOrderHandler(req,res)
{
var orderData;
db.queryAsync(..., onqueryasync);
function onqueryasync(userdata)
{
// integrate user data with order data
db.update(updateParams, onorderudpate);
}
function onorderupdate(e, r)
{
// handler error
write response.
}
}
javascript closure provides the way to keep state in variables across functions.
There is certainly much more to async programming and there are helper modules that help with basic constructs like chain, parallel, join etc as you write more involved async code. but this probably gives you a quick idea.
In mobile apps apps we can't (or should not) make network requests on the main thread. We normally get the results of the request back via a callback or a closure that is executed on the main thread when the result is available. Since the user may have moved on or the result may no longer be need, for example it may be an old request arriving out of order, we need to check that the action in the callback or closure should actually be executed based on the current state of the app.
In the case of iOS and swift I am planning on using closures so I am thinking of doing something like this for every request I make.
assume I have a method that looks something like this
func makeRequest(identifier: String, handler: (ident: String, result: ResultObject) -> Void) {
...
...
handler(identifier, result)
}
In addition to the handler that will be called when the result is available, I will pass in the value of an identifier, which in turn will be passed to the handler when it is called. The closure will capture a reference to the identifier when the request is created, so it be able to get the value that the reference holds at the time the handler is actually called. So it would look something like this, where ident is the value that commandIdentifier was when the request was made, and commandIdentifier inside the closure will be the value when the closure is actually executed.
commandIdentifer = "some unique identifier"
makeRequest(commandIdentifer) { ident, result in
if commandIdentifier == ident {
// do something
} else {
// do something else
}
}
I don't think there is anything special here, so my question is this:
Is this a general pattern, and if so where can I find any documentation on it?
I am particularly interested if there is some general way of creating the identifier and how to relate its reference in the main thread.
Also if I am total wrong and this not a good approach, I would like to hear that as well
I've used almost exactly that approach before. I use an integer identifier, and increment it when issuing a new request. That way if the pending request is superseded by a new one you can just drop the stale response on the floor.