Too many conditions in the method

Question

I am new to node.js and I am just wondering what you think about this code. For me, it seems there are too many conditions in the code. Is there any way to refactor it?

 var removeQuestions = function(questions) {
 if (questions.length < 1)
 return;
 var group_name = questions[0].group;
 var metagroup_name = questions[0].metagroup;
 // update count in groups
 QuestionGroupModel.find({group: group_name}).exec(function(err, groups) {
 if(!err) {
 groups[0].cnt = groups[0].cnt - questions.length;
 if(groups[0].cnt > 0) {
 groups[0].save(function(err2) {
 if(err2)
 console.info('error while updating group info');
 });
 } else {
 QuestionGroupModel.find({group: groups[0].group}).remove(function(err3) {
 if(!err3) {
 console.info('groups %s was deleted', groups[0].group);
 } else {
 console.info('error while deleting group');
 }
 });
 }
 } else {
 console.info('error while lookup group info');
 };
 });
 // delete questions
 for (var i = 0; i < questions.length; i++) {
 QuestionModel.remove({ _id: questions[i]._id }, function(err) {
 if(!err) {
 log.info("question removed");
 }
 });
 }
 };

Answer 1

Almost all of your conditions are error handling, so there's not a lot to clean up. For clarity's sake, I would make your initial error handler a guard condition, which makes it much more obvious what's going on. I would then break out all your inner functions into labeled functions, which makes it clear what you're trying to achieve:

QuestionGroupModel.find({group: group_name}).exec(function(err, groups) {
 if (err) {
 console.info("Error while lookup group info", err);
 return;
 }
 var deleteGroup = function(group) {
 QuestionGroupModel.find({group: groups[0].group}).remove(function(err) {
 console.info.apply(null, (err) ? ['error while deleting group', err] : ['groups %s was deleted', group]);
 });
 };
 var saveGroup = function(group) {
 group.save(function(err2) {
 if(err2)
 console.info('error while updating group info');
 });
 };
 groups[0].cnt = groups[0].cnt - questions.length;
 if (groups[0].cnt > 0) {
 saveGroup(groups[0]); // That you have two different arguments for similar operations is a code smell.
 } else {
 deleteGroup(groups[0].group);
 }
});

I don't have a clear picture of your QuestionGroupModel, but that they take different arguments for similar operations shows that the model itself has problems, and may require refactoring.