How can jQuery deferred be used?

jQuery 1.5 brings the new Deferred object and the attached methods .when, .Deferred and ._Deferred.

For those who haven't used .Deferred before, I've annotated the source for it.

What are the possible usages of these new methods, how do we go about fitting them into patterns?

I have already read the API and the source, so I know what it does. My question is how can we use these new features in everyday code?

I have a simple example of a buffer class that calls AJAX requests in order. (Next one starts after the previous one finishes).

/* Class: Buffer
 *  methods: append
 *
 *  Constructor: takes a function which will be the task handler to be called
 *
 *  .append appends a task to the buffer. Buffer will only call a task when the 
 *  previous task has finished
 */
var Buffer = function(handler) {
    var tasks = [];
    // empty resolved deferred object
    var deferred = $.when();

    // handle the next object
    function handleNextTask() {
        // if the current deferred task has resolved and there are more tasks
        if (deferred.isResolved() && tasks.length > 0) {
            // grab a task
            var task = tasks.shift();
            // set the deferred to be deferred returned from the handler
            deferred = handler(task);
            // if its not a deferred object then set it to be an empty deferred object
            if (!(deferred && deferred.promise)) {
                deferred = $.when();
            }
            // if we have tasks left then handle the next one when the current one 
            // is done.
            if (tasks.length > 0) {
                deferred.done(handleNextTask);
            }
        }
    }

    // appends a task.
    this.append = function(task) {
        // add to the array
        tasks.push(task);
        // handle the next task
        handleNextTask();
    };
};

I'm looking for demonstrations and possible uses of .Deferred and .when.

It would also be lovely to see examples of ._Deferred.

Linking to the new jQuery.ajax source for examples is cheating.

I am particularly interested in what techniques are available when we abstract away whether an operation is synchronously or asynchronously done.

The best use case I can think of is in caching AJAX responses. Here's a modified example from Rebecca Murphey's intro post on the topic:

var cache = {};

function getData( val ){

    // return either the cached value or jqXHR object wrapped Promise
    return $.when(
        cache[ val ] || 
        $.ajax('/foo/', {
            data: { value: val },
            dataType: 'json',
            success: function( resp ){
                cache[ val ] = resp;
            }
        })
    );
}

getData('foo').then(function(resp){
    // do something with the response, which may
    // or may not have been retrieved using an
    // XHR request.
});

Basically, if the value has already been requested once before it's returned immediately from the cache. Otherwise, an AJAX request fetches the data and adds it to the cache. The $.when/.then doesn't care about any of this; all you need to be concerned about is using the response, which is passed to the .then() handler in both cases. jQuery.when() handles a non-Promise/Deferred as a Completed one, immediately executing any .done() or .then() on the chain.

Deferreds are perfect for when the task may or may not operate asynchronously, and you want to abstract that condition out of the code.

Another real world example using the $.when helper:

$.when($.getJSON('/some/data/'), $.get('template.tpl')).then(function (data, tmpl) {

    $(tmpl) // create a jQuery object out of the template
    .tmpl(data) // compile it
    .appendTo("#target"); // insert it into the DOM

});

Here is a slightly different implementation of an AJAX cache as in ehynd's answer.

As noted in fortuneRice's follow-up question, ehynd's implementation didn't actually prevent multiple identical requests if the requests were performed before one of them had returned. That is,

for (var i=0; i<3; i++) {
    getData("xxx");
}

will most likely result in 3 AJAX requests if the result for "xxx" has not already been cached before.

This can be solved by caching the request's Deferreds instead of the result:

var cache = {};

function getData( val ){

    // Return a promise from the cache (if available)
    // or create a new one (a jqXHR object) and store it in the cache.
    var promise = cache[val];
    if (!promise) {
        promise = $.ajax('/foo/', {
            data: { value: val },
            dataType: 'json'
        });
        cache[val] = promise;
    }
    return promise;
}

$.when(getData('foo')).then(function(resp){
    // do something with the response, which may
    // or may not have been retreived using an
    // XHR request.
});

A deferred can be used in place of a mutex. This is essentially the same as the multiple ajax usage scenarios.

MUTEX

var mutex = 2;

setTimeout(function() {
 callback();
}, 800);

setTimeout(function() {
 callback();
}, 500);

function callback() {
 if (--mutex === 0) {
  //run code
 }
}

DEFERRED

function timeout(x) {
 var dfd = jQuery.Deferred();
 setTimeout(function() {
  dfd.resolve();
 }, x);
 return dfd.promise();
}

jQuery.when(
timeout(800), timeout(500)).done(function() {
 // run code
});

When using a Deferred as a mutex only, watch out for performance impacts (http://jsperf.com/deferred-vs-mutex/2). Though the convenience, as well as additional benefits supplied by a Deferred is well worth it, and in actual (user driven event based) usage the performance impact should not be noticeable.

This is a self-promotional answer, but I spent a few months researching this and presented the results at jQuery Conference San Francisco 2012.

Here is a free video of the talk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juRtEEsHI9E

Another use that I've been putting to good purpose is fetching data from multiple sources. In the example below, I'm fetching multiple, independent JSON schema objects used in an existing application for validation between a client and a REST server. In this case, I don't want the browser-side application to start loading data before it has all the schemas loaded. $.when.apply().then() is perfect for this. Thank to Raynos for pointers on using then(fn1, fn2) to monitor for error conditions.

fetch_sources = function (schema_urls) {
    var fetch_one = function (url) {
            return $.ajax({
                url: url,
                data: {},
                contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
                dataType: "json",
            });
        }
    return $.map(schema_urls, fetch_one);
}

var promises = fetch_sources(data['schemas']);
$.when.apply(null, promises).then(

function () {
    var schemas = $.map(arguments, function (a) {
        return a[0]
    });
    start_application(schemas);
}, function () {
    console.log("FAIL", this, arguments);
});

How can jQuery deferred be used?

Related

Recent Posts