How to make a block of code work synchronously - node.js

Question

Here is my code :
server.get(url_prefix + '/user/:user_id/photos', function(req, res, next) {
if (!req.headers['x-session-id']) {
res.send({
status: {
error: 1,
message: "Session ID not present in request header"
}
})
} else {
User.findOne({
session_id: req.headers['x-session-id']
}, function(err, user) {
if (user) {
var user_id = req.params.user_id
Album.find({userId : user_id})
.populate('images')
.exec(function (err, albums) {
if (albums) {
albums.forEach(function(album, j) {
var album_images = album.images
album_images.forEach(function(image, i) {
Like.findOne({imageID : image._id, userIDs:user._id}, function(err,like){
if(like){
albums[j].images[i].userLike = true;
}
})
})
})
return res.send({
status: {
error: 0,
message: "Successful"
},
data: {
albums: albums
}
})
} else
return notify_error(res, "No Results", 1, 404)
})
}
else {
res.send({
status: {
error: 1,
message: "Invalid Session ID"
}
})
}
})
}
})
I am trying to add a extra value (albums[j].images[i].userLike = true;) to my images array, which is inside album array.
The problem is return res.send({ send the data before we get response from the foreach
How can I make it work, so that return should happen only after foreach has completed all the iteration

Answer 1

You will have to wait with invoking res.send until you fetched all the likes for all the images in each of the albums. E.g.
var pendingImageLikes = album_images.length;
album_images.forEach(function(image, i) {
Like.findOne({imageID : image._id, userIDs:user._id}, function(err,like){
if (like) {
albums[j].images[i].userLike = true;
}
if (!--pendingImageLikes) {
// we fetched all likes
res.send(
// ...
);
}
});
You might need to special case for album_images.length === 0.
Also, this does not take into account that you have multiple albums with multiple images each. You would have to delay res.send there in a very similar way to make this actually work. You might want to consider using a flow control library like first (or any other of your preference, just search for "flow control library") to make this a bit easier.
Also, you might want to consider not relying on semicolon insertion and manually type your semicolons. It prevents ambiguous expressions and makes the code easier to read.

Answer 2

Since you need your code to wait until all of the find operations have completed, I'd suggest you consider using the async package, and specifically something like each (reference). It makes using async loops cleaner, especially when dealing with MongoDB documents and queries. There are lots of nice features, including the ability to sequentially perform a series of functions or waterfall (when you want to perform a series, but pass the results from step to step).
> npm install async
Add to your module:
var async = require("async");
Your code would look something like this:
albums.forEach(function(album, j) {
async.each(album.images, function(album, done) {
Like.findOne({imageID: image._id, userIDs:user._id}, function(err, like){
if(!err && like){
albums[j].images[i].userLike = true;
}
done(err); // callback that this one has finished
})
})
}, function (err) { // called when all iterations have called done()
if (!err) {
return res.send({
status: {
error: 0,
message: "Successful"
},
data: {
albums: albums
}
});
}
return notify_error(res, "No Results", 1, 404);
});
});