sheaf

Sheaf

An API to make looping over a series of async activities one at a time more straightforward.

Essentially it helps you code in a more synchronous manner than is convenient with many NodeJS libraries. Since much of Node's value is exactly it's async nature you should use with caution!

It is not the same promise.seq() in the node-promise, in that it is designed to work on a series of values through a chain of functions, rather than a single series of promise-returning functions.

You supply an array of initial values as the first argument to sheaf. Subsequent arguments should be functions that return either a value or a promise which resolves with a value. Starting with the values from the list, the output from each of function is given as the argument to the next. As each run through is complete, the next item in the list is used in the same way.

Sheaf itself returns a promise which resolves with an array of final values.

Here's a diagram of how it works:

Installation:

$ npm install sheaf

Example:

// The list we will use.
var urls = ['a.html', 'b.html'];

// A promise-returning function
var getu = function(u) {
    return $.get(u);
};

// A second promise returning function
// Note how it's a wrapper around a callback-based
// function.
var parse = function(data) {
    dfd = new $.Deferred();
    jsdom.env(data, [], function(win) {
        dfd.resolve(win);
    });
    return dfd.promise();
};

// A synchronous value-returning function
var check = function(win) {
    var val = false;
    return win.$('p').each(function() {
        if ( win.$(this).html().match(/^\s+/) ) {
            val = true;
        }
    }
    return val;
};

// Now, take the first item from `list`, run it through all the
// functions and when complete, take the second item and do the same
sheaf(urls, getu, parse, check)
    .then(
        function(allChecks) {
            console.log('all finished', allChecks);
        },
        null, // nb - currently no management of rejected promises
        function() {
            console.log('there was some progress');
        }
    );