Writing more readable code when using the JS APIs

Writing more readable code when using the JS APIs

As you might know most of Fliplet JS APIs use Promises when the result of such operation cannot be read synchronously. For example when reading data from the server or the device storage.

Take the following example:

Fliplet.App.Storage.get('foo').then(function (result) {


Promises are great, but they make the code less procedural hence more difficult to read and maintain. If you don’t need to support Internet Explorer 11, there’s a nice new feature of Javascript you can use right now in your Fliplet apps to make your code more readable and it’s called await/async.

The “await” keyword

By prefixing a promise with the await keyword, you can wait for the result of such promise before your code continues:

var result = await Fliplet.App.Storage.get('foo');

This means you can use the result straight away. Let’s take a look at a more complex example:

var connection = await Fliplet.DataSources.connect(123);
var entries = await connection.find();

var newEntry = await connection.insert({ foo: 'bar' });

// here I can use the "entries" array and also "newEntry"

Catching errors with async/await

When using await, errors can be caught in the more traditional try/catch way:

try {
  var result1 = await Fliplet.App.Storage.get('foo');
  var result2 = await Fliplet.App.Storage.get('bar');
} catch (err) {
  // woops! one of the above promises failed

Behind the scenes

The above works because when we detect the await keyword in your apps and screens custom code we wrap your code into a asynchronous function, like:

(async function () {
  // your code which uses "await" is here

Don’t forget that using async/await is not supported on IE11.