Use promise instead of callback for settimeout

You should all be familiar with ES6 promises by now as a way of handling asynchronicity in a more organized way. The simplest kind of asynch that we regularily come across in JavaScript is setTimeout, which normally takes this pattern.

setTimeout (function() {
   // do something after waiting 1000 milliseconds
}, 1000);

This is just fine, until you have more that one going on and you need to do something based on all of them having completed. This is where promises come into their own. Here’s setTimeout, but promise based.

/*
 * settimeout as a promise
 * @param {number} ms number of ms to wait
 * @param {*} [tag] optional tag that will be returned when resolved
 */
function loiter(ms, tag) {
  return new Promise(function(resolve, reject) {
    try {
      setTimeout(function() {
        resolve(tag);
      }, ms);
    } catch (err) {
      reject(err);
    }
  });
  }

and you can use it like this.

loiter(500)
.then (function () {
  console.log('do something');
  });

Doesn’t seem like a great improvement over setTimeout, until you do this.

Promise.all ([
  loiter(2000)
  .then (function () {
    console.log('with something else');
   }),
  loiter(1000)
  .then (function () {
    console.log('do something together');
  })]).then(function(){
  console.log('its all over');
  });

If you’re not using promises yet, then you should have a look. Life becomes a lot simpler.

For more like this see Google Apps Scripts Snippets