Use async await with Array.map

261
votes

Given the following code:

var arr = [1,2,3,4,5];

var results: number[] = await arr.map(async (item): Promise<number> => {
        await callAsynchronousOperation(item);
        return item + 1;
    });

which produces the following error:

TS2322: Type 'Promise<number>[]' is not assignable to type 'number[]'. Type 'Promise<number> is not assignable to type 'number'.

How can I fix it? How can I make async await and Array.map work together?

8
javascripttypescriptpromiseasync-awaitecmascript-2017
Why are you trying to make a synchronous operation into an async operation? arr.map() is synchronous and does not return a promise. - jfriend00
You can't send an asynchronous operation to a function, like map, which expects a synchronous one, and expect it to work. - Heretic Monkey
@jfriend00 I have many await statements in the inner function. It's actually a long function and I just simplified it to make it readable. I've added now an await call to make it clearer why it should be async. - Alon
You need to await something that returns a promise, not something that returns an array. - jfriend00
One useful thing to realise is that every time you mark a function as async, you're making that function return a promise. So of course, a map of async returns an array of promises :) - Anthony Manning-Franklin

8 Answers

558
votes

The problem here is that you are trying to await an array of promises rather than a promise. This doesn't do what you expect.

When the object passed to await is not a Promise, await simply returns the value as-is immediately instead of trying to resolve it. So since you passed await an array (of Promise objects) here instead of a Promise, the value returned by await is simply that array, which is of type Promise<number>[].

What you need to do here is call Promise.all on the array returned by map in order to convert it to a single Promise before awaiting it.

According to the MDN docs for Promise.all:

The Promise.all(iterable) method returns a promise that resolves when all of the promises in the iterable argument have resolved, or rejects with the reason of the first passed promise that rejects.

So in your case:

var arr = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];

var results: number[] = await Promise.all(arr.map(async (item): Promise<number> => {
    await callAsynchronousOperation(item);
    return item + 1;
}));

This will resolve the specific error you are encountering here.

20
votes

There's another solution for it if you are not using native Promises but Bluebird.

You could also try using Promise.map(), mixing the array.map and Promise.all

In you case: 

  var arr = [1,2,3,4,5];

  var results: number[] = await Promise.map(arr, async (item): Promise<number> => {
    await callAsynchronousOperation(item);
    return item + 1;
  });
11
votes

If you map to an array of Promises, you can then resolve them all to an array of numbers. See Promise.all.

10
votes

Solution below to process all elements of the array in parallel, asynchronously AND preserve the order:

const arr = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8];
const randomDelay = () => new Promise(resolve => setTimeout(resolve, Math.random() * 1000));

const calc = async n => {
  await randomDelay();
  return n * 2;
};

const asyncFunc = async () => {
  const unresolvedPromises = arr.map(n => calc(n));
  const results = await Promise.all(unresolvedPromises);
};

asyncFunc();

Also codepen.

Notice we only "await" for Promise.all. We call calc without "await" multiple times, and we collect an array of unresolved promises right away. Then Promise.all waits for resolution of all of them and returns an array with the resolved values in order.

3
votes

I'd recommend using Promise.all as mentioned above, but if you really feel like avoiding that approach, you can do a for or any other loop:

const arr = [1,2,3,4,5];
let resultingArr = [];
for (let i in arr){
  await callAsynchronousOperation(i);
  resultingArr.push(i + 1)
}

FYI: If you want to iterate over items of an array, rather than indices (@ralfoide 's comment), use of instead of in inside let i in arr statement.

1
votes

You can use:

for await (let resolvedPromise of arrayOfPromises) {
  console.log(resolvedPromise)
}

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Statements/for-await...of

If you wish to use Promise.all() instead you can go for Promise.allSettled() So you can have better control over rejected promises.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Promise/allSettled

0
votes

I had a task on BE side to find all entities from a repo, and to add a new property url and to return to controller layer. This is how I achieved it (thanks to Ajedi32's response):

async findAll(): Promise<ImageResponse[]> {
    const images = await this.imageRepository.find(); // This is an array of type Image (DB entity)
    const host = this.request.get('host');
    const mappedImages = await Promise.all(images.map(image => ({...image, url: `http://${host}/images/${image.id}`}))); // This is an array of type Object
    return plainToClass(ImageResponse, mappedImages); // Result is an array of type ImageResponse
  }

Note: Image (entity) doesn't have property url, but ImageResponse - has

0
votes

A solution using modern-async's map():

import { map } from 'modern-async'

...
const result = await map(myArray, async (v) => {
    ...
})

The advantage of using that library is that you can control the concurrency using mapLimit() or mapSeries().