So at work we're working on a bunch of node modules that will eventually be published as open-source and I'm in favor of callbacks and two of my co-workers are in favor of promises. We've discussed supporting both API interfaces and I was curious what the general consensus of the community was with respect to supporting both and the best way to name functions and methods to support both.
That being said, there are three obvious choices: (a) two function types: (1) synchronous functions; and (2) async functions that return promises but also handle callbacks var value = myFunctionSync(); myFunction(callback); var promise = myFunction(); this approach has a tiny performance overhead (since you have to check if the last argument is a function to determine if you should return a promise or execute that function as the callback) and makes all the functions a little convoluted (unless you make one higher order function that you apply to all your callback functions to support both APIs). Furthermore async, higher order, overloaded functions or variable arity functions become impossible since you can't necessarily assume that the last argument is always the callback. (b) three function types: (1) synchronous functions; (2) async callback functions; and (3) async promise functions var value = myFunctionSync(); myFunction(callback); var promise = myFunctionDeferred(); this is ugly but explicit in terms of what to expect and permits the most flexibility. (c) two function types: (1) synchronous functions; (2) async callback functions; var value = myFunctionSync(); myFunction(callback); and promise support is left up to the user by using a nodeify() method from a promise library. This is my preference, but won't make my co-workers happy. With all this in mind, what's the general consensus of the NodeJS community on this issue? I searched google and the archives and could not find any blog posts or discussions that address this particular issue. What are the pros and cons of each approach? What if any libraries implement options (a) or (b)? etc. -- -- Job Board: http://jobs.nodejs.org/ Posting guidelines: https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Mailing-List-Posting-Guidelines You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "nodejs" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs?hl=en?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "nodejs" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
