How to write reusable code in node.js

Question

I am trying to understand how to design node.js applications, but it seems there is something I can't grasp about asynchronous programming.

Let's say my application needs to access a database. In a synchronous environment I would implement a data access class with a read() method, returning an associative array.

In node.js, because code is executed asynchronously, this method can't return a value, so, after execution, it will have to "do" something as a side effect. It will then contain some code which does something else than just reading data.

Let's suppose I want to call this method multiple times, each time with a different success callback. Since the callback is included in the method itself, I can't find a clean way to do this without either duplicating the method or specifying all possible callbacks in a long switch statement.

What is the proper way to handle this problem? Am I approaching it the wrong way?

• herby: It is not very clear what is your problem, maybe rephrase it. I'd have two comments: 1. Maybe you just need to get used to async/callback way of doing things, I do not see anything like "unmanageable code soup" there. 2. Ad "loosely coupled classes": do you really need "classes" there? Classes are not needed to do OO neither to do good design. Maybe change the title.
• Jimmy Hoffa: I'm not certain what this code soup is either?
• lortabac: I changed the title and rephrased the question. I hope it is clearer now.

Answer 1

Since you can pass functions as parameters, it is common to pass a "callback" function to these sorts of functions. So, for example, you may have a "read" function that looks like this:

function getUser(userId, callback) {
 var mydbAPI = something;
 var myQuery = somethingElse;
 mydbAPI.getUser(myQuery, function(data) {
 //parse data a little here:
 myParsedData = ...;
 callback(myParsedData);
 });
}

You can then call the read method like this:

getUser(userId, function(parsedData) {
 //...do something with parsedData
});