Runs Promise
s in a pool that limits their concurrency.
An ECMAScript 2015 Promise
is a great way to handle asynchronous operations.
The Promise.all
function provides an easy interface to let a bunch of promises
settle concurrently.
However, it's an all-or-nothing approach: all your promises get created
simultaneously. If you have a ton of operations that you want to run with some
concurrency, Promise.all
is no good.
Instead, you probably want to limit the maximum number of simultaneous operations. That's where this module comes in. It provides an easy way of waiting for any number of promises to settle, while imposing an upper bound on the number of simultaneously executing promises.
The promises can be created in a just-in-time fashion. You essentially pass a function that produces a new promise every time it is called. Alternatively, you can pass an ES2015 iterator, meaning you can also use generator functions.
This module can be used both under Node.js and on the Web. If your
platform does not have a native Promise
implementation, you can use a polyfill
such as ES6-Promise.
npm install --save es6-promise-pool
bower install --save es6-promise-pool
<script src="es6-promise-pool.js"></script>
// On the Web, leave out this line and use the script tag above instead.
var PromisePool = require('es6-promise-pool')
var promiseProducer = function () {
// Your code goes here.
// If there is work left to be done, return the next work item as a promise.
// Otherwise, return null to indicate that all promises have been created.
// Scroll down for an example.
}
// The number of promises to process simultaneously.
var concurrency = 3
// Create a pool.
var pool = new PromisePool(promiseProducer, concurrency)
// Start the pool.
var poolPromise = pool.start()
// Wait for the pool to settle.
poolPromise.then(function () {
console.log('All promises fulfilled')
}, function (error) {
console.log('Some promise rejected: ' + error.message)
})
The PromisePool
constructor takes a Promise
-producing function as its first
argument. Let's first assume that we have this helper function that returns a
promise for the given value
after time
milliseconds:
var delayValue = function (value, time) {
return new Promise(function (resolve, reject) {
console.log('Resolving ' + value + ' in ' + time + ' ms')
setTimeout(function () {
console.log('Resolving: ' + value)
resolve(value)
}, time)
})
}
Now, let's use the helper function above to create five such promises, which
are each fulfilled after a second. Because of the concurrency
of 3
, the
first three promises will be fulfilled after one second. Then, the remaining two
will be processed and fulfilled after another second.
var count = 0
var promiseProducer = function () {
if (count < 5) {
count++
return delayValue(count, 1000)
} else {
return null
}
}
var pool = new PromisePool(promiseProducer, 3)
pool.start()
.then(function () {
console.log('Complete')
})
We can achieve the same result with ECMAScript 2015 iterators. Since ES2015 generator functions return such an iterator, we can make the example above a lot prettier:
const generatePromises = function * () {
for (let count = 1; count <= 5; count++) {
yield delayValue(count, 1000)
}
}
const promiseIterator = generatePromises()
const pool = new PromisePool(promiseIterator, 3)
pool.start()
.then(() => console.log('Complete'))
It's also possible to pass a generator function directly. In that case, it will be invoked with no arguments and the resulting iterator will be used. This feature will however be removed in version 3.
We can also ask the promise pool to notify us when an individual promise is
fulfilled or rejected. The pool fires fulfilled
and rejected
events exactly
for this purpose.
var pool = new PromisePool(promiseProducer, concurrency)
pool.addEventListener('fulfilled', function (event) {
// The event contains:
// - target: the PromisePool itself
// - data:
// - promise: the Promise that got fulfilled
// - result: the result of that Promise
console.log('Fulfilled: ' + event.data.result)
})
pool.addEventListener('rejected', function (event) {
// The event contains:
// - target: the PromisePool itself
// - data:
// - promise: the Promise that got rejected
// - error: the Error for the rejection
console.log('Rejected: ' + event.data.error.message)
})
pool.start()
.then(function () {
console.log('Complete')
})
Since version 2.0.0, this module does not depend on
ES6-Promise anymore. If you
want to support platforms without a native Promise
implementation, please
load a polyfill first.
If you prefer not to polyfill the global Promise
for whatever reason, you can
also pass your Promise
class as an option instead:
var ES6Promise = require('es6-promise').Promise // or another implementation
var pool = new PromisePool(promiseProducer, concurrency, {promise: ES6Promise})
- Vilic Vane's Promise Pool offers a similar API.
- Bluebird includes
Promise.map()
, which takes aconcurrency
option. - Similarly, λ (a.k.a. contra) has
λ.concurrent()
with the optionalcap
parameter. - With Q, you can use qlimit.
- Async does not use promises, but offers a
queue()
function.
MIT