Trying to understand how the node.js programming model works - node.js

Question

I've been reading about node.js recently (like many others). I find interesting for some use cases, but am a bit struggling to understand the inner workings, specifically the interaction between closure functions and the process flow of the code.
Let's say I have a function which accepts a key-value array. The function must check that the values follow certain data-quality guidelines (for example some keys must have a value, other keys must have numbers as values etc) before storing the data somewhere (for the purpose of this question let's assume data validation has to be done in the application itself).
In "regular" developments models I'd write something like this:
resultName = validateName(data.name)
resultAddress = validateAddress(data.address)
resultID = validateID(data.id)
if (resultName && resultAddress && resultID) {
store(data)
else {
sendErrorToUser(data)
}
Get the results of the validations, and either explain the error(s) to the user or store data and return some kind of confirmation. The flow is very clear.
The way I understand node.js, the way to do this would be to delegate the validations to a different function (to avoid waiting for each validation to finish), and supply two callback functions to the functions which validate the chunks of data:
* a callback to call when validation is successful
* a callback to call when validation fails
It's easy to now return to the user with a "please wait" message, but I have to wait for all validations to clear (or fail) before storing the data or explaining the problem to the user. As a simple way to figure out if all the validations are done I thought of using a variable that counts the number of functions that called the callback, and emitting a "validation complete" event to store the validated data (or get back to the user with any errors). Or, alternatively, emit an event after each validation is complete and in that event's code check if all validations are complete before emitting the "store" / "error" events.
My question is -- am I approaching this correctly? Or is there a more suitable way to do these kinds of things with node.js (or similar event-based systems).
Thank you!
Alon

Answer 1

Are your validations asynchronous? If they are not you can use the code you posted, the "regular" one.
If the validations are asynchronous (checking uniqueness of an email for instance), you need to provide callbacks:
var validateUniqueEmail = function (data, callback) {
db.find({email: data.email}, function (err, result) {
callback(err, result === null);
})
};
var validateAndStore = function (data, callback) {
asyncValidation(data, function (err, is_valid) {
if (err) {
callback(err, null);
} else if (!is_valid) {
callback('Email is not unique', null);
} else {
db.store(data, callback);
}
});
}
The code above can be simplified a lot by using some validator or ORM modules already existing
example: mongolia validator module.

Answer 2

Let's go. Basically, what you want to do is something along the lines of :
var validate(data, cb){
var allOk = true;
for(var key in data){
allOk = allOk && validate[key](data.key); // validator depends on the key
}
if (allOk) cb(null, data); else cb(new Error "bleh");
}
This could be done the following way (note how we pass the failed keys as the first (error) argument to the callback):
var validate(data, cb){
var status = {true:[], false:[]},
total = Object.keys(data).length,
done = 0;
for (var key in data)
(function(key){
validate[key](data[key], function(ok){
status[ok].push(key);
if (++done == total){
status[false].length ? cb(status[false]) : cb(null);
}
});
})(key);
}
Which you can use this way :
validate(data, function(failures){
if (failures){
// tell the user the input does not validate on the keys stored in failures
} else {
// all ok
store(data);
}
});

Answer 3

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think what you're asking is how to handle the response from multiple asynchronous calls.
Here's how I do it (using your validation example):
var result = {};
function isAllDataAvailable() {
return result.name !== undefined
&& result.address !== undefined
&& result.id !== undefined;
}
function callback(error) {
if (error) {
showError(error);
// terminate here (?)
return;
}
if (isAllDataAvailable()) {
showOutput();
}
}
validateName(data, callback);
validateAddress(data, callback);
validateEmail(data, callback);
The key here is the result object, which starts out as empty. As each field gets validated, it gets added to the result object (by the validation functions, which I've left out in the above snippet). I've used a single callback method, but you could have multiple, say callbackName, callbackAddress, etc. The validation results are processed only if and when the result object has been fully populated, which is checked in isAllDataAvailable.
Hope this helps.

Answer 4

Consider using: https://github.com/asaf/nodejs-model
It will make your life much easier when dealing with validators.