section25.4.md

Section 25.4: Waterfall : dependent mono-tasking

async.waterfall(tasks, afterTasksCallback) will execute a set of tasks. Each task are executed after another, and the result of a task is passed to the next task. As async.series(), if a task fails, async stop the execution and call immediately the main callback.

When tasks are finished successfully, async call the "master" callback with all errors and all results of tasks.

function getUserRequest(callback) {
  // We simulate the request with a timeout
  setTimeout(function() {
    let userResult = {
      name : 'Aamu'
    };
    callback(null, userResult);
  }, 500);
}

function getUserFriendsRequest(user, callback) {
  // Another request simulate with a timeout
  setTimeout(function() {
    let friendsResult = [];
    if (user.name === "Aamu"){
      friendsResult = [
        {
          name : 'Alice'
        }, 
        {
          name: 'Bob'
        }
      ];
    }
    callback(null, friendsResult);
  }, 500);
}

async.waterfall([
    getUserRequest,
    getUserFriendsRequest
  ],
  function(err, results) {
    if (err) {
      return console.error(err);
    }
    console.log(JSON.stringify(results));
  }
);

Result: results contains the second callback parameter of the last function of the waterfall, which is friendsResult in that case.