How do I convert an existing callback API to promises?

I want to work with promises but I have a callback API in a format like:

1. DOM load or other one time event:

window.onload; // set to callback
...
window.onload = function() {

};

2. Plain callback:

function request(onChangeHandler) {
    ...
}
request(function() {
    // change happened
    ...
});

3. Node style callback ("nodeback"):

function getStuff(dat, callback) {
    ...
}
getStuff("dataParam", function(err, data) {
    ...
})

4. A whole library with node style callbacks:

API;
API.one(function(err, data) {
    API.two(function(err, data2) {
        API.three(function(err, data3) {
            ...
        });
    });
});

How do I work with the API in promises, how do I "promisify" it?

You can use JavaScript native promises with Node JS.

My Cloud 9 code link: https://ide.c9.io/adx2803/native-promises-in-node

/**
* Created by dixit-lab on 20/6/16.
*/

var express = require('express');
var request = require('request');   //Simplified HTTP request client.


var app = express();

function promisify(url) {
    return new Promise(function (resolve, reject) {
        request.get(url, function (error, response, body) {
            if (!error && response.statusCode == 200) {
                resolve(body);
            }
            else {
                reject(error);
            }
        })
    });
}

//get all the albums of a user who have posted post 100
app.get('/listAlbums', function (req, res) {
    //get the post with post id 100
    promisify('http://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/100').then(function (result) {
        var obj = JSON.parse(result);
        return promisify('http://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/users/' + obj.userId + '/albums')
    })
    .catch(function (e) {
        console.log(e);
    })
    .then(function (result) {
        res.end(result);
    })
})

var server = app.listen(8081, function () {
    var host = server.address().address
    var port = server.address().port

    console.log("Example app listening at http://%s:%s", host, port)
})

//run webservice on browser : http://localhost:8081/listAlbums

With plain old vanilla javaScript, here's a solution to promisify an api callback.

function get(url, callback) {
        var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
        xhr.open('get', url);
        xhr.addEventListener('readystatechange', function () {
            if (xhr.readyState === 4) {
                if (xhr.status === 200) {
                    console.log('successful ... should call callback ... ');
                    callback(null, JSON.parse(xhr.responseText));
                } else {
                    console.log('error ... callback with error data ... ');
                    callback(xhr, null);
                }
            }
        });
        xhr.send();
    }

/**
     * @function promisify: convert api based callbacks to promises
     * @description takes in a factory function and promisifies it
     * @params {function} input function to promisify
     * @params {array} an array of inputs to the function to be promisified
     * @return {function} promisified function
     * */
    function promisify(fn) {
        return function () {
            var args = Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments);
            return new Promise(function(resolve, reject) {
                fn.apply(null, args.concat(function (err, result) {
                    if (err) reject(err);
                    else resolve(result);
                }));
            });
        }
    }

var get_promisified = promisify(get);
var promise = get_promisified('some_url');
promise.then(function (data) {
        // corresponds to the resolve function
        console.log('successful operation: ', data);
}, function (error) {
        console.log(error);
});

In Node.js 8 you can promisify object methods on the fly using this npm module:

https://www.npmjs.com/package/doasync

It uses util.promisify and Proxies so that your objects stay unchanged. Memoization is also done with the use of WeakMaps). Here are some examples:

With objects:

const fs = require('fs');
const doAsync = require('doasync');

doAsync(fs).readFile('package.json', 'utf8')
  .then(result => {
    console.dir(JSON.parse(result), {colors: true});
  });

With functions:

doAsync(request)('http://www.google.com')
  .then(({body}) => {
    console.log(body);
    // ...
  });

You can even use native call and apply to bind some context:

doAsync(myFunc).apply(context, params)
  .then(result => { /*...*/ });

You can use native Promise in ES6, for exemple dealing with setTimeout:

enqueue(data) {

    const queue = this;
    // returns the Promise
    return new Promise(function (resolve, reject) {
        setTimeout(()=> {
                queue.source.push(data);
                resolve(queue); //call native resolve when finish
            }
            , 10); // resolve() will be called in 10 ms
    });

}

In this exemple, the Promise has no reason to fail, so reject() is never called.

The callback style function always like this(almost all function in node.js is this style):

//fs.readdir(path[, options], callback)
fs.readdir('mypath',(err,files)=>console.log(files))

This style has same feature:

1. the callback function is passed by last argument.

2. the callback function always accept the error object as it's first argument.

So, you could write a function for convert a function with this style like this:

const R =require('ramda')

/**
 * A convenient function for handle error in callback function.
 * Accept two function res(resolve) and rej(reject) ,
 * return a wrap function that accept a list arguments,
 * the first argument as error, if error is null,
 * the res function will call,else the rej function.
 * @param {function} res the function which will call when no error throw
 * @param {function} rej the function which will call when  error occur
 * @return {function} return a function that accept a list arguments,
 * the first argument as error, if error is null, the res function
 * will call,else the rej function
 **/
const checkErr = (res, rej) => (err, ...data) => R.ifElse(
    R.propEq('err', null),
    R.compose(
        res,
        R.prop('data')
    ),
    R.compose(
        rej,
        R.prop('err')
    )
)({err, data})

/**
 * wrap the callback style function to Promise style function,
 * the callback style function must restrict by convention:
 * 1. the function must put the callback function where the last of arguments,
 * such as (arg1,arg2,arg3,arg...,callback)
 * 2. the callback function must call as callback(err,arg1，arg2,arg...)
 * @param {function} fun the callback style function to transform
 * @return {function} return the new function that will return a Promise,
 * while the origin function throw a error, the Promise will be Promise.reject(error),
 * while the origin function work fine, the Promise will be Promise.resolve(args: array),
 * the args is which callback function accept
 * */
 const toPromise = (fun) => (...args) => new Promise(
    (res, rej) => R.apply(
        fun,
        R.append(
            checkErr(res, rej),
            args
        )
    )
)

For more concise, above example used ramda.js. Ramda.js is a excellent library for functional programming. In above code, we used it's apply(like javascript function.prototype.apply) and append(like javascript function.prototype.push ). So, we could convert the a callback style function to promise style function now:

const {readdir} = require('fs')
const readdirP = toPromise(readdir)
readdir(Path)
    .then(
        (files) => console.log(files),
        (err) => console.log(err)
    )

toPromise and checkErr function is own by berserk library, it's a functional programming library fork by ramda.js(create by me).

Hope this answer is useful for you.