Attempt  

Retries functions that throw or call back with an error, in crazily
customizable ways.

Installation

In your project folder, type:

npm install attempt

Usage

Whenever you have code that looks like this:

function flakyApiCall(function(err, result) {
if (err)
console.log('Flaky API died AGAIN!', err);
else
doSomething(result);
});

Just drop that code in an attempt!

var attempt = require('attempt');
attempt(
function() {
flakyApiCall(this);
},
function(err, result) {
if (err)
console.log('Flaky API failed 3 times.', err);
else
doSomething(result);
});

Details

Attempt will re-run your attempted function if it throws an error or if it
calls back with a non-falsey first argument (following the first-arg-is-an-error
standard Node.js convention). The function call looks like this:

attempt([options], tryFunc, [callback])

tryFunc is called with one argument: attempts. It is the number of times the
tryFunc has been run before.

attempt(function(attempts) {
if (attempts)
console.log('This is retry #' + attempts);
else
console.log('This is the first attempt!');
});

$3

The following options are set per request:

#### retries
Default: 2. The number of times to retry the tryFunc before giving up and sending the error to the callback.

attempt(
{ retries: 15 },
function() {
flakyApiCall(this);
},
function(err, result) {
if (err)
console.log('Failed first attempt + 15 retries = 16 failures.', err);
else
doSomething(result);
});

#### interval
Default: 0. The number of milliseconds to wait between attempts.

attempt(
{ interval: 5000 },
function() {
flakyApiCall(this);
},
function(err, result) {
if (err)
console.log('3 attempts * 5 seconds = 15 seconds of failure.', err);
else
doSomething(result);
});

#### factor
Default: 1. The factor by which the interval should be multiplied per
attempt. If set to 2 with an interval of 5000, the first retry will execute
after 5 seconds, the second after 10, the third after 20, and so on.

This allows an exponential back-off scheme. For a smaller gap between retries,
floats like 1.2 can be used to grow the interval at a slower rate.

#### onError
Default: null. Function to call when the tryFunc fails with an error. The
first argument is the error.

attempt(
{
onError: function(err) {
console.log(err);
}
},
function() { flakyApiCall(this); },
function(err, result) { / ... / });

The second argument, if it exists, is a callback function that will need to be
called in order for the next attempt to continue. This is useful if you have
to do something asynchronous to fix the error.

attempt(
{
onError: function(err, done) {
log.write(err, done);
}
},
function() { flakyApiCall(this); },
function(err, result) { / ... / });

By default, calling done() will ignore the retry interval. If you still want
it to be observed, call done(true).

#### max
Default: Infinity. The maximum number of milliseconds to wait before retrying.
If the interval or factor causes a wait time larger than 'max', 'max' will
be used.

#### random
Default: 0. Increase the wait interval by a random factor. Generally, this
should be a number between 0 (no randomness) and 1 (wait time could double).
For example, if .5 is used, the interval could be anywhere between 100% and
150% of its original calculated time.

#### attempts
Default: 0. The number of attempts to fake Attempt into believing were
already completed. This is mostly used by Attempt internally, but can be
useful for hacking interval times.

License

Attempt is distributed under the MIT license.

Credits

Attempt was created by Tom Frost in 2012. Because webservice APIs be flaky,
man.