async-signals

Synthatic sugar and utilities to support async tasks on top of signal-polyfill.

Installation

``bash
npm install async-signals
`

Usage

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An AsyncSignal is just a signal that has an AsyncResult as its value. AsyncResult is defined as follows:

`ts
export type AsyncResult =
| {
status: "pending";
}
| {
status: "completed";
value: T;
}
| {
status: "error";
error: E;
};
`

It has 3 possible states: pending, completed or error. You can see that the lifecycle is really similar to that of a Promise. The big difference is that an AsyncSignal can update any watcher multiple times (eg. a UI component) throughout the lifecycle of an application when new completed values get discovered.

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A common use case is to implement a signal that is responsible for some async task (eg. fetching data from the backend) only when it's watched.

`js
import { AsyncState } from 'async-signals';

import { getMyFriendsUsersIds, onNewFriendAdded } from './requests.js';

let unsubscribe = undefined;

// Will contain all the user ids for all my friends, updated in real-time when a new friend is added
const myFriendsUsersIdsSignal = new AsyncState({ status: 'pending' }, {
[Signal.subtle.watched]: async () => {
const myFriendsUsersIds = await getMyFriendsUsersIds();
myFriendsUsersIdsSignal.set({
status: "completed",
value: myFriendsUsersIds,
});

unsubscribe = onNewFriendAdded(friendUserId => {
const currentFriends = myFriendsUsersIdsSignal.get().value;
const friends = [...currentFriends, friendUserId];
myFriendsUsersIdsSignal.set({
status: 'completed',
value: friends
});
});
},
[Signal.subtle.unwatched]: () => {
// We revert back to pending state so that the next time this signal is queried,
// the backend request is sent again
asyncState.set({
status: "pending",
});
unsubscribe?.();
},
});
`

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Once we have source signals for some interesting state, we can create any downstread computed signals with AsyncComputed.

`js
import { AsyncComputed } from 'async-signals';

// Will contain the number of my friends, updated in real-time when a new friend is added
const myFriendsCountSignal = new AsyncComputed(() => {
// This will be re-run every time there is a new value for myFriendsUsersIds
const myFriendsUsersIds = myFriendsUsersIdsSignal.get();
// Return early any other status than completed
if (myFriendsUsersIds.status !== 'completed') return myFriendsUsersIds;

return myFriendsUsersIds.length;
});
`

Whenever this signal is watched, it will watch the myFriendsUsersIdsSignal, which in its turn will make a request to the backend and listen to any new friends added. Whenever the value of myFriendsUsersIdsSignal changes, either by the request to the backend being completed or because there is a new friend added, the callback for myFriendsCountSignal will be run again. With this, myFriendsCountSignal can guarantee to any downstream watcher that it will contain the count of my friends, up to date with the state of the backend.

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Sometimes we just want to read once the resulting state from a signal. For that we have toPromise:

`js
const myFriendsCount = await toPromise(myFriendsCountSignal);
`

> [!WARN]
> Don't do this when reading a signal from a UI component. The UI component will not be update every time the value of the signal changes.
> Only do this in business logic that only needs to read the value of the signal once.

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We can easily construct an AsyncSignal from a Promise with fromPromise:

`js
import { fromPromise } from 'async-signals';

import { getMyUserId } from './requests.js';

const myUserId = await fromPromise(() => getMyUserId());
`

This is useful for tasks whose result doesn't need to be updated after they resolve.

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Image we need a myFriendsProfilesSignal that will contain an up to date HashMap: UserId -> Profile for all our friends.

We can implement myFriendsProfilesSignal as follows:

`js
import { AsyncComputed, joinMap } from 'async-signals';

import { getUserProfile } from './requests.js';

// Client-side "cache" so that we don't request the profile for a user if we already have it
const usersProfiles = new Map();

// Will contain all the profiles for all my friends, updated in real-time when a new friend is added
const myFriendsProfilesSignal = new AsyncComputed(() => {
// This will be re-run every time there is a new value for myFriendsUsersIds
const myFriendsUsersIds = myFriendsUsersIds.get();
// Return early any other status than completed
if (myFriendsUsersIds.status !== 'completed') return myFriendsUsersIds;

for (const friendUserId of myFriendsUsersIds.value) {
if (!usersProfiles.has(friendUserId)) {
usersProfiles.set(friendUserId, fromPromise(() => getUserProfile(friendUserId)));
}
}

return joinAsyncMap(friendsProfiles); // Will iterate over all the signals in the map and will join their results
// If any of the results is still pending, it will return "pending"
// If any of the results is an error, it will return that error
// If all results are completed, it will return the map of their values
});
``