Managing lots of callback recursion in Nodejs

user_50505 0
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In Nodejs, there are virtually no blocking I/O operations. This means that almost all nodejs IO code involves many callbacks. This applies to reading and writing to/from databases, files, processes, etc. A typical example of this is the following:

var useFile = function(filename,callback){
    posix.stat(filename).addCallback(function (stats) {
        posix.open(filename, process.O_RDONLY, 0666).addCallback(function (fd) {
            posix.read(fd, stats.size, 0).addCallback(function(contents){
                callback(contents);
            });
        });
    });
};

...

useFile("test.data",function(data){
    // use data..
});

I am anticipating writing code that will make many IO operations, so I expect to be writing many callbacks. I'm quite comfortable with using callbacks, but I'm worried about all the recursion. Am I in danger of running into too much recursion and blowing through a stack somewhere? If I make thousands of individual writes to my key-value store with thousands of callbacks, will my program eventually crash?

Am I misunderstanding or underestimating the impact? If not, is there a way to get around this while still using Nodejs' callback coding style?

v8 node.js recursion callback javascript
6 Answers

Same example, with debug output added (see below for output):

usefile.js:

var sys = require("sys"),
  posix = require("posix");

var useFile = function(filename,callback){
    posix.stat(filename).addCallback(function (stats) {
        posix.open(filename, process.O_RDONLY, 0666).addCallback(function (fd) {
            posix.read(fd, stats.size, 0).addCallback(function(contents){
                callback(contents);
                sys.debug("useFile callback returned");
            });
            sys.debug("read returned");
        });
        sys.debug("open returned");
    });
    sys.debug("stat returned");
};

useFile("usefile.js",function(){});

Output:

DEBUG: stat returned
DEBUG: open returned
DEBUG: read returned
DEBUG: useFile callback returned
user_2557940

You can try

http://github.com/creationix/do

or roll your own like I did. Never mind missing error handling for now (just ignore that) ;)

var sys = require('sys');

var Simplifier = exports.Simplifier = function() {}

Simplifier.prototype.execute = function(context, functions, finalFunction) {
  this.functions = functions;
  this.results = {};
  this.finalFunction = finalFunction;
  this.totalNumberOfCallbacks = 0
  this.context = context;
  var self = this;

  functions.forEach(function(f) {
    f(function() {
      self.totalNumberOfCallbacks = self.totalNumberOfCallbacks + 1;
      self.results[f] = Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments, 0);     
      if(self.totalNumberOfCallbacks >= self.functions.length) {
        // Order the results by the calling order of the functions
        var finalResults = [];
        self.functions.forEach(function(f) {
          finalResults.push(self.results[f][0]);
        })
        // Call the final function passing back all the collected results in the right order 
        finalFunction.apply(self.context, finalResults);
      }
    });
  });
}

And a simple example using it

// Execute 
new simplifier.Simplifier().execute(
  // Context of execution
  self,  
  // Array of processes to execute before doing final handling
  [function(callback) {
      db.collection('githubusers', function(err, collection) {
        collection.find({}, {limit:30}, function(err, cursor) {
          cursor.toArray(function(err, users) { callback(users); })
        });
      });      
    },

    function(callback) {
      db.collection('githubprojects', function(err, collection) {
        collection.find({}, {limit:45, sort:[['watchers', -1]]}, function(err, cursor) {
          cursor.toArray(function(err, projects) { callback(projects); })
        });
      });              
    }
  ],  
  // Handle the final result
  function(users, projects) {
    // Do something when ready
  }
);
user_1126580

Your stuff is fine. I do recursive calls in Express to follow HTTP redirects, but what your doing is "traversal" and not recursion

Admin1
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