Return a value from phantomjs to nodejs - node.js

Question

I'm using phantomjs using jquerygo library and am trying to this.
Visit a url
Click on a link and wait for it to load
Grab a particular tag and return it to nodejs for processing.
I realize that in phantomjs:
The execution is sandboxed, the web page has no access to the phantom object and it can't probe its own setting
But I should be able to return a simple string from the evaluate right?
But that is not working. My code is as follows:
var photogsScrapeCount = function(url, callback){
console.log("LOADED PHOTOGSSCRAPE Count");
url = decodeURIComponent(url);
//$.config.site = 'https://www.magnumphotos.com/';
$.config.addJQuery = false;
$.visit(url, function() {
$.waitForElement(".7n7np102",function() {
$.getPage(function(page) {
var imgCounterMinus = page.evaluate(function(){
$(".7n7np102 a").click(); // open the image enlarge
var temp = setTimeout(function(){
imgCounterMinus1 = $("span[id$='TotalPageCount_Lbl']").html();
imgCounterMinus1 = imgCounterMinus1.split(" ");
imgCounterMinus1 = imgCounterMinus1[2];
imgCounterMinus1 = parseInt(imgCounterMinus1);
console.log("imgCounterMinus1" + imgCounterMinus1);
return (imgCounterMinus1 - 3);
}, 4000);
return temp;
});
//console.log("After evaluate: " + imgCounterMinus)
});
});
});
};
Can this be achieved in any different way? The basic example from website is working so I am assuming that the setTimeout is giving me problems.
Any ideas or suggestions would be very helpful as I have very little experience in writing jquery, Js.

Answer 1

The docs say (emphasis mine):
For one, this library is not a complete API mirror of jQuery. Every API is asynchronous (due to its interaction with Phantom.js), so there are some differences.
There is also an example how page.evaluate() must be used. The result is not returned, but passed into a second callback. There is no way to return something from an asynchronous execution of a function except by using the callback. So the setTimeout syntax is also wrong.
$(".7n7np102 a").click(function(){
setTimeout(function(){
$.getPage(function(page) {
page.evaluate(function(){
var imgCounterMinus1 = $("span[id$='TotalPageCount_Lbl']").html();
imgCounterMinus1 = imgCounterMinus1.split(" ");
imgCounterMinus1 = imgCounterMinus1[2];
imgCounterMinus1 = parseInt(imgCounterMinus1);
console.log("imgCounterMinus1" + imgCounterMinus1);
return (imgCounterMinus1 - 3);
}, function(err, result){
console.log("After evaluate: " + result);
callback();
$.close();
});
});
}, 4000);
});