When using callbacks inside a loop in javascript,

Question

This question already has an answer here:

• JavaScript closure inside loops – simple practical example 39 answers

Let's say I have something as follows:

for(var i = 0; i < length; i++){
  var variable = variables[i];
  otherVariable.doSomething(variable, function(err){ //callback for when doSomething ends
    do something else with variable;
  }

By the time the callbacks are called, variable will inevitably be the last variable for all the callbacks, instead of being a different one for each callback, as I would like. I realize that I could pass variable to doSomething() and then get that passed back as part of the callback, but doSomething() is part of an external library, and I'd rather not mess around with the source code for that.

Do those of you that know JavaScript better than I do know if there are any alternative ways to do what I'd like to do?

Best, and thanks,
Sami

Answer 1

Ok I've seemed to figure this out. What I needed to do was to put a function(var) wrapper around otherVariable.doSomething(), so the updated code looks as follows:

for(var i = 0; i < length; i++){
  var variable = variables[i];
  (function(var){ //start wrapper code
    otherVariable.doSomething(var, function(err){ //callback for when doSomething ends
      do something else with var; //please note that i'm dealing with var here, not variable
    }
  })(variable);//passing in variable to var here
}

hope this helps anybody else that gets stuck on something like this in the future!

@aparker42, i'd still love to hear your answer to my question in the comment to your question, since that still does confuse me.

EDIT: of course, since this is javascript, you wouldn't want to use var as a variable name.

Answer 2

A common, if ugly, way of dealing with this situation is to use another function that is immediately invoked to create a scope to hold the variable.

for(var i = 0; i < length; i++) {
  var variable = variables[i];
  otherVariable.doSomething(function(v) { return function(err) { /* something with v */ }; }(variable));
}

Notice that inside the immediately invoked function the callback that is being created, and returned, references the parameter to the function v and not the outside variable. To make this read much better I would suggest extracting the constructor of the callback as a named function.

function callbackFor(v) {
  return function(err) { /* something with v */ };
}
for(var i = 0; i < length; i++) {
  var variable = variables[i];
  otherVariable.doSomething(callbackFor(variable));
}