As we know, inside an async function, code will not continue executing until the awaited coroutine finishes executing:
await coro()
# or
await asyncio.gather(coro_1(), coro_2())
# Code below will run AFTER the coroutines above finish running = desired effect
Outside (or inside) an async function it is possible to add coroutines to an event loop with asyncio.create_task(coro()), which returns a Task object.
In my scenario the tasks are added to an >>> existing running loop <<<, and the code that follows will continue executing without waiting for that task/coroutine to finish. Of course, it is possible to execute a callback function when the task finishes with task_obj.add_done_callback(callback_func).
asyncio.create_task(coro()) is especially useful on Jupyter Notebooks / Jupyter Lab because Jupyter runs an event loop in the background. Calling asyncio.get_event_loop() will retrieve Jupyter's event loop. Inside a Jupyter Notebook we cannot call asyncio.run(coro()) or loop.run_until_complete() because the loop is already running (except if we run the async code an a separate process and create a new event loop inside that process, but this is not the use case I'm looking for).
So my question is how can I await (from outside an async function = without using await keyword) on an asyncio task (or group of tasks) to finish and retrieve results before executing the code that follows?
tsk_obj = asyncio.create_task(coro()) # adds task to a (in my case) running event loop
# QUESTION:
# What can be done to await the result before executing the rest of the code below?
print('Result is:', tsk_obj.result())
# ^-- this of course will execute immediately = NOT the desired effect
# (the coroutine is very likely still running on the event loop and the result is not ready)
