Parallel multi-tasking

suggest change

async.parallel(tasks, afterTasksCallback) will execute a set of tasks in parallel and wait the end of all tasks (reported by the call of callback function).

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

function shortTimeFunction(callback) {
  setTimeout(function() {
    callback(null, 'resultOfShortTime');
  }, 200);
}

function mediumTimeFunction(callback) {
  setTimeout(function() {
    callback(null, 'resultOfMediumTime');
  }, 500);
}

function longTimeFunction(callback) {
  setTimeout(function() {
    callback(null, 'resultOfLongTime');
  }, 1000);
}

async.parallel([
    shortTimeFunction,
    mediumTimeFunction,
    longTimeFunction
  ],
  function(err, results) {
    if (err) {
      return console.error(err);
    }

    console.log(results);
  });

Result : ["resultOfShortTime", "resultOfMediumTime", "resultOfLongTime"].

Call `async.parallel()` with an object

You can replace the tasks array parameter by an object. In this case, results will be also an object with the same keys than tasks.

It’s very useful to compute some tasks and find easily each result.

async.parallel({
    short: shortTimeFunction,
    medium: mediumTimeFunction,
    long: longTimeFunction
  },
  function(err, results) {
    if (err) {
      return console.error(err);
    }

    console.log(results);
  });

Result : {short: "resultOfShortTime", medium: "resultOfMediumTime", long: "resultOfLongTime"}.

Resolving multiple values

Each parallel function is passed a callback. This callback can either return an error as the first argument or success values after that. If a callback is passed several success values, these results are returned as an array.

async.parallel({
    short: function shortTimeFunction(callback) {
      setTimeout(function() {
        callback(null, 'resultOfShortTime1', 'resultOfShortTime2');
      }, 200);
    },
    medium: function mediumTimeFunction(callback) {
      setTimeout(function() {
        callback(null, 'resultOfMediumTime1', 'resultOfMeiumTime2');
      }, 500);
    }
  },
  function(err, results) {
    if (err) {
      return console.error(err);
    }

    console.log(results);
  });

Result :

{
    short: ["resultOfShortTime1", "resultOfShortTime2"], 
    medium: ["resultOfMediumTime1", "resultOfMediumTime2"]
}

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Table Of Contents

Parallel multi-tasking

Call async.parallel() with an object

Resolving multiple values

Call `async.parallel()` with an object