Question

I’m a little confused how to determine when async function called multiple times from another one is finished a call from the last iteration:

function MainAsyncFunction(callback) {
  for (var i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
    SubAsyncFunction(function(success) {
      if (i >= 10 && success) { // THIS IS WRONG?!
        callback(true); // happens too early
      }
    });
  }
};

function SubAsyncFunction(callback) {
  SubSubAsyncFunction(function() {
        callback(true);
  });
}

What I’m doing is calling the Google Distance Matrix service, which has a limitation of 25 destinations, hence I’m having to split my array of destinations to call this service multiple times but I don’t understand when it’s finished.

and in the main bit of code I can tell that the second iteration of the loop in the MainAsyncFunction hasn’t yet completed when it does a call back.

I think my problem is I haven’t got my head around the order of events when dealing with Async functions in JavaScript… please explain how the subject is normally achieved.

Answer 1

You could use the jQuery Deferred object, which acts as a token representing the status of an async operation.

The following is a simplified example:

//set up your sub method so that it returns a Deferred object
function doSomethingAsync() {
    var token = $.Deferred();
    myAsyncMethodThatTakesACallback(function() {
        //resolve the token once the async operation is complete
        token.resolve();
    });
    return token.promise();
};

//then keep a record of the tokens from the main function
function doSomethingAfterAllSubTasks() {
    var tokens = [];
    for (var i=0; i < 100; i++) {
        //store all the returned tokens
        tokens.push(doSomethingAsync());
    }

    $.when.apply($,tokens)
        .then(function() {
            //once ALL the sub operations are completed, this callback will be invoked
            alert("all async calls completed");
        });
};

The following is an updated version of the OP’s updated code:

function MainAsyncFunction(callback) {
  var subFunctionTokens = [];
  for (var i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
    subFunctionTokens.push(SubAsyncFunction());
  }

  $.when.apply($,subFunctionTokens)
  .then(function() {
    callback(true);
  });
};

function SubAsyncFunction() {
  var token = $.Deferred();
  SubSubAsyncFunction(function() {
        token.resolve();
  });
  return token.promise();
};​