A service that helps you run functions asynchronously, and use their return values (or exceptions) when they are done processing.

This is an implementation of promises/deferred objects inspired by Kris Kowal's Q.

$q can be used in two fashions --- one which is more similar to Kris Kowal's Q or jQuery's Deferred implementations, and the other which resembles ES6 (ES2015) promises to some degree.

$q constructor

The streamlined ES6 style promise is essentially just using $q as a constructor which takes a resolver function as the first argument. This is similar to the native Promise implementation from ES6, see MDN.

While the constructor-style use is supported, not all of the supporting methods from ES6 promises are available yet.

It can be used like so:

// for the purpose of this example let's assume that variables `$q` and `okToGreet`
// are available in the current lexical scope (they could have been injected or passed in).

function asyncGreet(name) {
  // perform some asynchronous operation, resolve or reject the promise when appropriate.
  return $q(function(resolve, reject) {
    setTimeout(function() {
      if (okToGreet(name)) {
        resolve('Hello, ' + name + '!');
      } else {
        reject('Greeting ' + name + ' is not allowed.');
      }
    }, 1000);
  });
}

var promise = asyncGreet('Robin Hood');
promise.then(function(greeting) {
  alert('Success: ' + greeting);
}, function(reason) {
  alert('Failed: ' + reason);
});

Note: progress/notify callbacks are not currently supported via the ES6-style interface.

Note: unlike ES6 behavior, an exception thrown in the constructor function will NOT implicitly reject the promise.

However, the more traditional CommonJS-style usage is still available, and documented below.

The CommonJS Promise proposal describes a promise as an interface for interacting with an object that represents the result of an action that is performed asynchronously, and may or may not be finished at any given point in time.

From the perspective of dealing with error handling, deferred and promise APIs are to asynchronous programming what try, catch and throw keywords are to synchronous programming.

// for the purpose of this example let's assume that variables `$q` and `okToGreet`
// are available in the current lexical scope (they could have been injected or passed in).

function asyncGreet(name) {
  var deferred = $q.defer();

  setTimeout(function() {
    deferred.notify('About to greet ' + name + '.');

    if (okToGreet(name)) {
      deferred.resolve('Hello, ' + name + '!');
    } else {
      deferred.reject('Greeting ' + name + ' is not allowed.');
    }
  }, 1000);

  return deferred.promise;
}

var promise = asyncGreet('Robin Hood');
promise.then(function(greeting) {
  alert('Success: ' + greeting);
}, function(reason) {
  alert('Failed: ' + reason);
}, function(update) {
  alert('Got notification: ' + update);
});

At first it might not be obvious why this extra complexity is worth the trouble. The payoff comes in the way of guarantees that promise and deferred APIs make, see https://github.com/kriskowal/uncommonjs/blob/master/promises/specification.md.

Additionally the promise api allows for composition that is very hard to do with the traditional callback (CPS) approach. For more on this please see the Q documentation especially the section on serial or parallel joining of promises.

The Deferred API

A new instance of deferred is constructed by calling $q.defer().

The purpose of the deferred object is to expose the associated Promise instance as well as APIs that can be used for signaling the successful or unsuccessful completion, as well as the status of the task.

Methods

• resolve(value) – resolves the derived promise with the value. If the value is a rejection constructed via $q.reject, the promise will be rejected instead.
• reject(reason) – rejects the derived promise with the reason. This is equivalent to resolving it with a rejection constructed via $q.reject.
• notify(value) - provides updates on the status of the promise's execution. This may be called multiple times before the promise is either resolved or rejected.

Properties

• promise – {Promise} – promise object associated with this deferred.

The Promise API

A new promise instance is created when a deferred instance is created and can be retrieved by calling deferred.promise.

The purpose of the promise object is to allow for interested parties to get access to the result of the deferred task when it completes.

Methods

• then(successCallback, errorCallback, notifyCallback) – regardless of when the promise was or will be resolved or rejected, then calls one of the success or error callbacks asynchronously as soon as the result is available. The callbacks are called with a single argument: the result or rejection reason. Additionally, the notify callback may be called zero or more times to provide a progress indication, before the promise is resolved or rejected.

  This method returns a new promise which is resolved or rejected via the return value of the successCallback, errorCallback (unless that value is a promise, in which case it is resolved with the value which is resolved in that promise using promise chaining). It also notifies via the return value of the notifyCallback method. The promise cannot be resolved or rejected from the notifyCallback method.

• catch(errorCallback) – shorthand for promise.then(null, errorCallback)

• finally(callback, notifyCallback) – allows you to observe either the fulfillment or rejection of a promise, but to do so without modifying the final value. This is useful to release resources or do some clean-up that needs to be done whether the promise was rejected or resolved. See the full specification for more information.

Chaining promises

Because calling the then method of a promise returns a new derived promise, it is easily possible to create a chain of promises:

promiseB = promiseA.then(function(result) {
  return result + 1;
});

// promiseB will be resolved immediately after promiseA is resolved and its value
// will be the result of promiseA incremented by 1

It is possible to create chains of any length and since a promise can be resolved with another promise (which will defer its resolution further), it is possible to pause/defer resolution of the promises at any point in the chain. This makes it possible to implement powerful APIs like $http's response interceptors.

Differences between Kris Kowal's Q and $q

There are two main differences:

• $q is integrated with the $rootScope.Scope Scope model observation mechanism in angular, which means faster propagation of resolution or rejection into your models and avoiding unnecessary browser repaints, which would result in flickering UI.
• Q has many more features than $q, but that comes at a cost of bytes. $q is tiny, but contains all the important functionality needed for common async tasks.

Testing

it('should simulate promise', inject(function($q, $rootScope) {
  var deferred = $q.defer();
  var promise = deferred.promise;
  var resolvedValue;

  promise.then(function(value) { resolvedValue = value; });
  expect(resolvedValue).toBeUndefined();

  // Simulate resolving of promise
  deferred.resolve(123);
  // Note that the 'then' function does not get called synchronously.
  // This is because we want the promise API to always be async, whether or not
  // it got called synchronously or asynchronously.
  expect(resolvedValue).toBeUndefined();

  // Propagate promise resolution to 'then' functions using $apply().
  $rootScope.$apply();
  expect(resolvedValue).toEqual(123);
}));