Node.js callbacks and this - how it should be solved?

Question

Every JavaScript programmer is familiar with this "problem" (it can be considered as a feature, depending on various conditions) - this is lately binded:

let foo = {
 bar(){return this;}
};
let _bar = foo.bar;
_bar() === foo.bar(); // false; 

_bar() evaluates to global object or undefined depending on presence of 'use strict' directive and foo.bar() evaluates to foo.

Node.js have a convention of providing "error first" callbacks.

My question is - what should be set by library as this of callback? EventEmitter instances set this to emitter instance and it would be most obvious solution for me - but I couldn't find popular libraries using this pattern.

Native Array instances methods use pattern Array.prototype.method = function(fn, thisArg=null){} with last argument being this context. It seems to be good solution for constant-length methods, but for variadic functions it have edge cases with this set to an instance of function.

Speaking outside of Node, jQuery use $.ajax({context: thisArg}) to set this argument of callback.

So what would be the best solution for eg. class abstracting away implementation details of user?

User.getUserByLogin('nick', function(err, user) {
 // user is User instance
 user.updateUser({name: 'new name'}, function(err){
 // what SHOULD be `this` here?
 });
});

Answer 1

My general first recommendation about this, is don't use it, it makes programs harder to read with no real upside. The primary exception being constructor functions.

In a library you can just leave this of a callback being global/undefined, anything you would pass as a this value may as well be passed as another parameter.