How run async / await in parallel in Javascript

Question

Finally async/await will be supported in all major browser soon except IE. So now we can start writing more readable code with async/await but there is a catch. A lot of people use async await like this:

const userResponse = await fetchUserAsync();
const postsResponse = await fetchPostsAsync();

While this code is readable it has a problem, it runs the functions in series, it won't start fetching posts until the fetching of the user is finished. The solutions is simple, we need to fetch the resources in parallel.

So what I want to do is (in pseudo language):

fn task() {
  result-1 = doAsync();
  result-2 = doAsync();
  result-n = doLongAsync();

  // handle results together
  combinedResult = handleResults(result-1, result-2);

  lastResult = handleLastResult(result-n);
}

Answer 1

You can write something like this:

const responses = await Promise.all([
 fetchUserAsync(),
 fetchPostsAsync(),
]);

const userResponse = responses[0];
const postsResponse = responses[1];

This is easy right? But there is a catch. Promise.all has fail-fast behaviour which means, it will reject as soon as one of the promises rejected. Probably you want a more robust solution where we are in charge of handling the rejections any of the fetches. Luckily there is a solution, it can be achieved simply with async/await without the need of using Promise.all. A working example:

console.clear();

function wait(ms, data) {
  return new Promise( resolve => setTimeout(resolve.bind(this, data), ms) );
}

/** 
 * This will run in series, because 
 * we call a function and immediately wait for it's result, 
 * so this will finish in 1s.
 */
async function series() {
  return {
    result1: await wait(500, 'seriesTask1'),
    result2: await wait(500, 'seriesTask2'),
  }
}

/** 
 * While here we call the functions first,
 * then wait for the result later, so 
 * this will finish in 500ms.
 */
async function parallel() {
  const task1 = wait(500, 'parallelTask1');
  const task2 = wait(500, 'parallelTask2');

  return {
    result1: await task1,
    result2: await task2,
  }
}

async function taskRunner(fn, label) {
  const startTime = performance.now();
  console.log(`Task ${label} starting...`);
  let result = await fn();
  console.log(`Task ${label} finished in ${ Number.parseInt(performance.now() - startTime) } miliseconds with,`, result);
}

void taskRunner(series, 'series');
void taskRunner(parallel, 'parallel');


/* 
 * The result will be:
 * Task series starting...
 * Task parallel starting...
 * Task parallel finished in 500 milliseconds with, { "result1": "parallelTask1", "result2": "parallelTask2" }
 * Task series finished in 1001 milliseconds with, { "result1": "seriesTask1", "result2": "seriesTask2" }
 */