JavaScript, Node.js: is Array.forEach asynchronous

Question

I have a question regarding the native Array.forEach implementation of JavaScript: Does it behave asynchronously? For example, if I call:

[many many elements].forEach(function () {lots of work to do})

Will this be non-blocking?

Answer 1

No, it is blocking. Have a look at the specification of the algorithm.

However a maybe easier to understand implementation is given on MDN:

if (!Array.prototype.forEach)
{
  Array.prototype.forEach = function(fun /*, thisp */)
  {
    "use strict";

    if (this === void 0 || this === null)
      throw new TypeError();

    var t = Object(this);
    var len = t.length >>> 0;
    if (typeof fun !== "function")
      throw new TypeError();

    var thisp = arguments[1];
    for (var i = 0; i < len; i++)
    {
      if (i in t)
        fun.call(thisp, t[i], i, t);
    }
  };
}

---

If you have to execute a lot of code for each element, you should consider to use a different approach:

function processArray(items, process) {
    var todo = items.concat();

    setTimeout(function() {
        process(todo.shift());
        if(todo.length > 0) {
            setTimeout(arguments.callee, 25);
        }
    }, 25);
}

and then call it with:

processArray([many many elements], function () {lots of work to do});

This would be non-blocking then. The example is taken from High Performance JavaScript.

Another option might be web workers.

Answer 2

Here is a small example you can run to test it:

[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9].forEach(function(n){
    var sum = 0;
    console.log('Start for:' + n);
    for (var i = 0; i < ( 10 - n) * 100000000; i++)
        sum++;

    console.log('Ended for:' + n, sum);
});

It will produce something like this(if it takes too less/much time, increase/decrease the number of iterations):

(index):48 Start for:1
(index):52 Ended for:1 900000000
(index):48 Start for:2
(index):52 Ended for:2 800000000
(index):48 Start for:3
(index):52 Ended for:3 700000000
(index):48 Start for:4
(index):52 Ended for:4 600000000
(index):48 Start for:5
(index):52 Ended for:5 500000000
(index):48 Start for:6
(index):52 Ended for:6 400000000
(index):48 Start for:7
(index):52 Ended for:7 300000000
(index):48 Start for:8
(index):52 Ended for:8 200000000
(index):48 Start for:9
(index):52 Ended for:9 100000000
(index):45 [Violation] 'load' handler took 7285ms

Answer 3

This is a short asynchronous function to use without requiring third party libs

Array.prototype.each = function (iterator, callback) {
    var iterate = function () {
            pointer++;
            if (pointer >= this.length) {
                callback();
                return;
            }
            iterator.call(iterator, this[pointer], iterate, pointer);
    }.bind(this),
        pointer = -1;
    iterate(this);
};

Answer 4

It is possible to code even the solution like this for example :

 var loop = function(i, data, callback) {
    if (i < data.length) {
        //TODO("SELECT * FROM stackoverflowUsers;", function(res) {
            //data[i].meta = res;
            console.log(i, data[i].title);
            return loop(i+1, data, errors, callback);
        //});
    } else {
       return callback(data);
    }
};

loop(0, [{"title": "hello"}, {"title": "world"}], function(data) {
    console.log("DONE\n"+data);
});

On the other hand, it is much slower than a "for".

Otherwise, the excellent Async library can do this: https://caolan.github.io/async/docs.html#each

Answer 5

There is a package on npm for easy asynchronous for each loops.

var forEachAsync = require('futures').forEachAsync;

// waits for one request to finish before beginning the next 
forEachAsync(['dogs', 'cats', 'octocats'], function (next, element, index, array) {
  getPics(element, next);
  // then after all of the elements have been handled 
  // the final callback fires to let you know it's all done 
  }).then(function () {
    console.log('All requests have finished');
});

Also another variation forAllAsync

Answer 6

If you need an asynchronous-friendly version of Array.forEach and similar, they're available in the Node.js 'async' module: http://github.com/caolan/async ...as a bonus this module also works in the browser.

async.each(openFiles, saveFile, function(err){
    // if any of the saves produced an error, err would equal that error
});