What is the difference between async.waterfall and

Question

The nodejs async module: https://github.com/caolan/async provides 2 similar methods, async.waterfall and async.series.

What is the difference between them?

Answer 1

It appears that async.waterfall allows each function to pass its results on to the next function, while async.series passes all results to the final callback. At a higher level, async.waterfall would be for a data pipeline ("given 2, multiply it by 3, add 2, and divide by 17"), while async.series would be for discrete tasks that must be performed in order, but are otherwise separate.

Answer 2

async.waterfall() is dealing with an action that relies on the previous outcome.

async.series() is dealing with an action that wants to see all the result at the end

Answer 3

Both functions pass the return value, of every function to the next, then when done will call the main callback, passing its error, if an error happens.

The difference is that async.series(), once the series have finished, will pass all the results to the main callback. async.waterfall() will pass to the main callback only the result of the last function called.