Is awaiting an async method that does not return a promise explicitly considered as a bad practice?

Question

Say I have the following function:

const someFunc = async(obj) => {
    const { x, y } = obj;
    const result = await devices.update(
        { x: x, y: y },
        { $set: { z: 1 } },
        { upsert: false }
    );
    if (result.nModified !== 1) throw new Error("Some error");
    return result;
};

And I call it like this:

try {
    await someFunc();
catch (err) {
    console.log(err);
}

I can't return device.update(...) since I need to perform the test for the number of documents modified inside the function. I also know that someFunc() wraps the returned result in a Promise object, but was not sure if this code is considered a clean code.

Answer 1

Your code looks valid. If you skip await then it won't wait until it resolves the Promise inside. Instead it is considering the return value as a resolved Promise . From the documentation for await :

If the value of the expression following the await operator is not a Promise, it's converted to a resolved Promise.

So I made a quick example just to see the difference without and with await keyword.

Please consider the following code.

 (async () => { console.log('async function started'); const runAsync = async (value) => { const result = await new Promise(resolve => { setTimeout(() => resolve(value), 2000); }); return result; }; const dataWithoutAwait = runAsync('value'); console.log('data without await', dataWithoutAwait); const dataAwait = await runAsync('value'); console.log('data with await', dataAwait); })();

I hope this clarifies and help your question.

Answer 2

I see nothing wrong in this. Look perfectly valid.