deferred-listener

node-deferred-listener

Extends Node.js requestListeners with q's deferred promise support.

With this library you can turn any listener function that's function(req, res[, next) into promise capable and still keep it working the same way.

You can use it with various frameworks and libraries:

• http
• Connect
• Express
• restify

License

It's open source, MIT.

Installation

You can install it simply from NPM:

npm install deferred-listener

Example how to turn existing Connect middlewares to support promises

var deferred_listener = require('deferred-listener');
var connect = require('connect');
var app = connect()
  .use(deferred_listener(connect.logger('dev')))
  .use(deferred_listener(connect.static('public')))
  .use(deferred_listener(function(req, res, next){
    
    next();
    
    // Now, let's try to make a bug and call next again
    next();
    
    // ...it doesn't work since calling next() only resolves our promise and 
    // it cannot be triggered twice!
    
  }))
  .use(deferred_listener(function(req, res){
    res.end('hello world!\n');
  }))
 .listen(3000);

Example how to build Connect middlewares with promises

deferred_listener() can be used also when building your own new middleware.

Let's build a simple middleware that fetches some data from the filesystem and parses it to req.file.

Look, no next()!

function fetch_file(file, key) {
    key = key || file;
    var readFile = Q.nfbind(FS.readFile);
    return deferred_listener(function(req, res) {
        return readFile(file, "utf-8").then(function(data) {
            if(!req.file) { req.file = {}; }
            req.file[key] = JSON.parse(data);
        });
    });
}

...and here's how to use it:

var app = connect()
  .use(connect.logger('dev'))
  .use(connect.static('public'))
  .use(fetch_file("test.json", "test"))
  .use(function(req, res){
    res.end('hello world!\n\n' + 'test.foo = ' + req.file.test.foo + "\n" );
  })
 .listen(3000);

Reference

deferred_listener(requestListener)

The requestListener is a function in format function(request, response[, next]). It's common format for various different Node.js middlewares.

The next is an optional function in format function([err]).

deferred_listener() returns a wrapper function to requestListener.

Returned function acts just like the original function but has additional support for promises. It can still be called with the next callback but instead of calling the original callback directly it will only reject or resolve single promise and call the original next only once. However when called without a next callback only a promise will be returned.