async/await example not working. What am I doing wrong

Question

I am trying to learn the concepts of async/await in javascript. I tried a simple code, to wait for a create post function to finish before calling the getPosts function, but the newly created post is not showing up. This is what I have tried out.

 const posts = [{ title: "Post One", body: "This is post one" }, { title: "Post Two", body: "This is post two" } ] const newpost = { title: "Post Three", body: "This is post three" } function getPosts() { setTimeout(() => { let output = ''; posts.forEach((post, index) => { output += `<li>${post.title} : ${post.body}</li>`; }); document.body.innerHTML = output; }, 1000); } function createPost(post) { setTimeout(() => { posts.push(post); }, 2000); } async function init() { await createPost(newpost); getPosts(); } init(); 

Can anyone point out what I am doing wrong?

Answer 1

createPost should return promise like below

function createPost(post) {
return new Promise((resolve,reject)=> {
setTimeout(() => {
    posts.push(post);
    resolve();
  }, 2000);
});  
}

Answer 2

The problem is that createPost doesn't return a promise.

You can either return a promise manually:

function createPost(post) {
  return new Promise((resolve) => {
  setTimeout(() => {
    posts.push(post);
    resolve();
  }, 2000);
  });  
}

But who want's to create promises by hand 😉? And since you want to practice with async functions, have createPost be an async function by itself.

I'm also extracting the setTimeout calls to a small wait async utility function:

 const posts = [{ title: "Post One", body: "This is post one" }, { title: "Post Two", body: "This is post two" } ] const newpost = { title: "Post Three", body: "This is post three" } const sleep = time => new Promise(resolve => setTimeout(resolve, time)); async function getPosts() { await sleep(1000); let output = ''; posts.forEach((post, index) => { output += `<li>${post.title} : ${post.body}</li>`; }); document.body.innerHTML = output; } async function createPost(post) { await sleep(2000); posts.push(post); } async function init() { await createPost(newpost); getPosts(); } init(); 

Answer 3

May I know why you're using setTimeout() function? removing the setTimeout() makes the code just work fine

 const posts = [{
    title: "Post One",
    body: "This is post one"
  },
  {
    title: "Post Two",
    body: "This is post two"
  }
]

const newpost = {
  title: "Post Three",
  body: "This is post three"
}

function getPosts() {
    let output = '';
    posts.forEach((post, index) => {
      output += `<li>${post.title} : ${post.body}</li>`;
    });
    document.body.innerHTML = output;
}

function createPost(post) {
    posts.push(post);
}

async function init() {
  await createPost(newpost);
  getPosts();
}

init();

Here is the working code pen: Code Pen Link

Answer 4

createPost should return a promise so the function should be like that

function createPost(post) {
  return new Promise( resolve => 
    setTimeout(() => {
      posts.push(post);
      resolve()
    }, 2000);
  });
}

Answer 5

The await command expects the calling function to return a promise. Such a function usually execute an asynchronous command and resolves the promise when the command is successful.

 var posts = []; function createPost(post) { return new Promise(function(resolve, reject){ setTimeout(() => { posts.push(post); resolve(); //<- resolved the promise here }, 2000); }) } async function testAsync() { await createPost('a post'); console.log(posts) } testAsync(); 

In this case, although Array.push() doesn't do any async operation, you call it via setTimeout to do it in an async fashion.

Answer 6

Async/await only works with promises, so you need to wrap whatever code you have in createPost() in a promise, return it and then resolve it to indicate that it doesn't have to be awaited anymore and the code can continue executing. I made a tiny example from your code where you can see how it works:

 function getPosts(){ setTimeout(()=>{ console.log( "get posts" ); }, 1000); } function createPost(post){ return new Promise( res => { setTimeout(()=>{ console.log( "post created" ); res(); }, 2000); } ); } async function init(){ await createPost(); getPosts(); } init(); 

Answer 7

createPost is not any async function, await will listen only to promise and async function, to be able to await that kind of setTimeout, and to apply ur intent, u need promise with done method to tell Nodejs to end listening

function createPost(post) {
  return new Promise(done){
    setTimeout(() => {
      posts.push(post);
      done()
    }, 2000);
  }
}