Matt at Keyboard Writes Code

Esqlate WaitFor

A simple TypeScript function will wait for a condition to be satisfied.

Why

The Esqlate project, which is a way to design an API using PostgreSQL is modelled as a queue based system, so when you issue a request, you don't get back the result immediately, you need to poll to monitor you request. Esqlate WaitFor was created as a to manage that polling.

How

To use Esqlate WaitFor you need to supply a function which will return Ready<X>, where X is the result you wish to finally receive. A Ready is somewhat like a Promise, but instead of it being resolved or not, the Ready can be in a state of { complete: true, value: "TheValueYouWant" } or { complete: false }. This is similar to an Algebraic data type like Haskell's Maybe or may Rust's Result.

Installation

npm install --save esqlate-waitfor

Usage

A Ready is defined like the following:

export interface Ready<X> {
    value?: X;
    complete: boolean;
}

Therefore main thing we need to do is define a function which returns a Ready, in this case getReady(). aside from this we need to add a function to control how the back-off works when attempts are unsuccessful, similar to calcuateNewDelay().

let location = "http://localhost:8803/request/get_customer/wbzAClFJ

// Returns a `Ready`.
function getReady() {
    return fetch(location)
        .then(resp => resp.json())
        .then((j) => {
            if (j.status == "complete") {
                return { complete: true, value: j.location };
            }
            return { complete: false };
        });
}

// Gets the amount of time to wait before a new attempt starts.
function calculateNewDelay(attemptsSoFar) { return attemptsSoFar * 300; }

return waitFor(getReady, calculateNewDelay)
    .then((loc) => {
        window.location = loc;
    });

You can find this project at GitHub. Tags: typescript, javascript, algebraic, data, types, polling, library