Async/await

Developing web applications often involves performing tasks like fetching data from servers which can take some time to complete. JavaScript provides various ways to deal with these asynchronous operations, and one of the most powerful methods it offers is called async and await. The Async/Await function is a simple yet powerful concept in JavaScript designed to handle asynchronous operations in a much more manageable way.

Before understanding async/await, we should have knowledge of Promises. Promises in JavaScript are objects that might produce a single value in the future, thereby making asynchronous actions such as fetching data from the server very easy to manage. A Promise is said to be settled if it is either resolved, meaning the operation completed successfully, or rejected, meaning the operation failed.

Now, coming to async/await. These are just syntax sugar over Promises. They make your asynchronous code look more like synchronous/procedural code, which is easier for humans to understand. An async function returns a Promise. If the function throws an error, the Promise will be rejected. If the Promise resolves, the await operator is used to wait for the Promise’s resolution.

The keyword async before a function means that the function always returns a promise. If the code has a return path that doesn’t wrap the value in a Promise object, JavaScript automatically wraps it in a resolved promise with that value.

Another use case of async/await is error handling. The try/catch construct works perfectly with async/await. If an error is thrown inside an async function, it can be caught and handled using a try/catch block. This makes error handling in our asynchronous code even better and cleaner.

Async/await provides a very elegant way to write asynchronous code that looks synchronous. They make the code much less cluttered and easy to understand, thus improving the readability of the code. They are widely adopted by the JavaScript community, and almost every modern browser and Node.js has support for them.

Async/await is not just about writing prettier code. It’s about improving the way we write, read, and reason about asynchronous tasks. By structuring our code in a way that appears synchronous, we can prevent a lot of common bugs. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or a beginner, async/await has a lot to offer, and it’s definitely worth taking the time to understand them.