How can jQuery deferred be used?

Question

jQuery 1.5 brings the new Deferred object and the attached methods .when, .Deferred and ._Deferred.

For those who havn't used .Deferred before I've annotated the source for it

What are the possible usages of these new methods, how do we go about fitting them into patterns?

I have already read the API and the source, so I know what it does. My question is how can we use these new features in everyday code?

I have a simple example of a buffer class that calls AJAX request in order. (Next one start after previous one finishes).

/* Class: Buffer
 *  methods: append
 *
 *  Constructor: takes a function which will be the task handler to be called
 *
 *  .append appends a task to the buffer. Buffer will only call a task when the 
 *  previous task has finished
 */
var Buffer = function(handler) {
    var tasks = [];
    // empty resolved deferred object
    var deferred = $.when();

    // handle the next object
    function handleNextTask() {
        // if the current deferred task has resolved and there are more tasks
        if (deferred.isResolved() && tasks.length > 0) {
            // grab a task
            var task = tasks.shift();
            // set the deferred to be deferred returned from the handler
            deferred = handler(task);
            // if its not a deferred object then set it to be an empty deferred object
            if (!(deferred && deferred.promise)) {
                deferred = $.when();
            }
            // if we have tasks left then handle the next one when the current one 
            // is done.
            if (tasks.length > 0) {
                deferred.done(handleNextTask);
            }
        }
    }

    // appends a task.
    this.append = function(task) {
        // add to the array
        tasks.push(task);
        // handle the next task
        handleNextTask();
    };
};

I'm looking for demonstrations and possible uses of .Deferred and .when.

It would also be lovely to see examples of ._Deferred.

Linking to the new jQuery.ajax source for examples is cheating.

Bounty: Show us what techniques are available when we abstract away whether an operation is synchronously or asynchronously done.

Answer 1

Here is a slightly different implementation of an AJAX cache as in ehynd's answer.

As noted in fortuneRice's follow-up question, ehynd's implementation didn't actually prevent multiple identical requests if the requests were performed before one of them had returned. That is,

for (var i=0; i<3; i++) {
    getData("xxx");
}

will most likely result in 3 AJAX requests if the result for "xxx" has not already been cached before.

This can be solved by caching the request's Deferreds instead of the result:

var cache = {};

function getData( val ){

    // Return a promise from the cache (if available)
    // or create a new one (a jqXHR object) and store it in the cache.
    var promise = cache[val];
    if (!promise) {
        promise = $.ajax('/foo/', {
            data: { value: val },
            dataType: 'json'
        });
        cache[val] = promise;
    }
    return promise;
}

$.when(getData('foo')).then(function(resp){
    // do something with the response, which may
    // or may not have been retreived using an
    // XHR request.
});

Answer 2

You can also integrate it with any 3rd-party libraries which makes use of JQuery.

One such library is Backbone, which is actually going to support Deferred in their next version. I have talked about it also on my blog

Answer 3

You can use a deferred object to make a fluid design that works well in webkit browsers. Webkit browsers will fire resize event for each pixel the window is resized, unlike FF and IE which fire the event only once for each resize. As a result, you have no control over the order in which the functions bound to your window resize event will execute. Something like this solves the problem:

var resizeQueue = new $.Deferred(); //new is optional but it sure is descriptive
resizeQueue.resolve();

function resizeAlgorithm() {
//some resize code here
}

$(window).resize(function() {
    resizeQueue.done(resizeAlgorithm);
});

This will serialize the execution of your code so that it executes as you intended it to. Beware of pitfalls when passing object methods as callbacks to a deferred. Once such method is executed as a callback to deferred, the 'this' reference will be overwritten with reference to the deferred object and will no longer refer to the object the method belongs to.

Answer 4

The answer by ehynds will not work, because it caches the responses data. It should cache the jqXHR which is also a Promise. Here is the correct code:

var cache = {};

function getData( val ){

    // return either the cached value or an
    // jqXHR object (which contains a promise)
    return cache[ val ] || $.ajax('/foo/', {
        data: { value: val },
        dataType: 'json',
        success: function(data, textStatus, jqXHR){
            cache[ val ] = jqXHR;
        }
    });
}

getData('foo').then(function(resp){
    // do something with the response, which may
    // or may not have been retreived using an
    // XHR request.
});

The answer by Julian D. will work correct and is a better solution.

Answer 5

A deferred can be used in place of a mutex. This is essentially the same as the multiple ajax usage scenarios.

MUTEX

var mutex = 2;

setTimeout(function() {
 callback();
}, 800);

setTimeout(function() {
 callback();
}, 500);

function callback() {
 if (--mutex === 0) {
  //run code
 }
}

DEFERRED

function timeout(x) {
 var dfd = jQuery.Deferred();
 setTimeout(function() {
  dfd.resolve();
 }, x);
 return dfd.promise();
}

jQuery.when(
timeout(800), timeout(500)).done(function() {
 // run code
});

When using a Deferred as a mutex only, watch out for performance impacts (http://jsperf.com/deferred-vs-mutex/2). Though the convenience, as well as additional benefits supplied by a Deferred is well worth it, and in actual (user driven event based) usage the performance impact should not be noticeable.

Answer 6

Another use that I've been putting to good purpose is fetching data from multiple sources. In the example below, I'm fetching multiple, independent JSON schema objects used in an existing application for validation between a client and a REST server. In this case, I don't want the browser-side application to start loading data before it has all the schemas loaded. $.when.apply().then() is perfect for this. Thank to Raynos for pointers on using then(fn1, fn2) to monitor for error conditions.

fetch_sources = function (schema_urls) {
    var fetch_one = function (url) {
            return $.ajax({
                url: url,
                data: {},
                contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
                dataType: "json",
            });
        }
    return $.map(schema_urls, fetch_one);
}

var promises = fetch_sources(data['schemas']);
$.when.apply(null, promises).then(

function () {
    var schemas = $.map(arguments, function (a) {
        return a[0]
    });
    start_application(schemas);
}, function () {
    console.log("FAIL", this, arguments);
});