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Shrihari Mohan
Shrihari Mohan

Posted on • Updated on

🙅🏽‍♂️ Don't use AWAIT inside FOREACH

It won't work as you intended.

Let us see a quick scenario. Consider the following code and guess the output. I am just waiting each second and returning resValue

const arr = [1 ,2 , 3 , 4]
let resValue = 1

const _1SecPromise = () => new Promise((res, rej) => { 
  setTimeout(() => { res(resValue++) }, 1000); 
})

const justFun  = async () => {
  console.log('🚀 Start')

  arr.forEach(async (each) => {
    const val = await _1SecPromise()
    console.log("🚀 each ", val)

   })

  console.log('🚀 End')

}

justFun()
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If you guessed it right , Then you may have already the know the concept called Generators. If not just learn it in 2 mins.

Output

Concept of generators.

  • In simple terms , each is called on seperate function that is synchronous.

  • In other words, forEach expects a synchronous function. ForEach does not wait for promises.

  • A simple explanation of how generators work can be seen in following image

Gnerator Explanation

  • Since next() method accepts only synchronous (atleast in this forEach case) promises don't work as intended when we use await.

A simple solution to use await and loops is to use the Good'ol for loop.

const justFun  = async () => {
  console.log('🚀 Start')
  for ( let i = 0 ; i < arr.length ; i ++) {
    const val = await _1SecPromise()
    console.log("🚀 ~ file: index.js ~ line 23 ~ arr.forEach ~ val", i)

  }
  console.log('🚀 End')
}
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Trust me this will work as expected.

Result

If you want to know more about how to solve array of promises.
There are some great methods such as

  • The Promise.all() method takes an iterable of promises as an input, and returns a single Promise that resolves to an array of the results of the input promises.

  • The for...of statement creates a loop iterating over iterable objects, including: built-in String, Array, array-like objects (e.g., arguments or NodeList), TypedArray, Map, Set, and user-defined iterables.

  • We can use iterators like Map and Reduce also which will work as intended.


If you want to have more clarifications or some mistaked in this post please leave a comment.

If you learnt something new , don't Forget to 💜 !

🧑🏽‍💻 To know which app I used to create a small illustration demonstrating Regular and Genrator functions. Visit PWA apps I use for productivity

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And If you like these type of small articles to boost your knowledge, don't forget to follow on dev.to, It motivates to write more and contribute open source.

Peace 🕊 !


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