cooperative

Cooperative threading versions of map, filter, forEach, etc, suitable for big processing in single-threaded Node.js.

One of the gotchas with Node.js is that it's single-threaded. Although the advantages of doing concurrency in a single-threaded environment far outstrip the disadvantages, there are still times when you want to do some lengthy processing but don't want to block up the thread for new HTTP requests or UI activity.

This module provides common functional primitives like map, filter and forEach but that call setImmediate regularly so as not to block other activity. This means you can do large processing and stay responsive.

The trick is to call setImmediate regularly so your application is still responsive, but not on every iteration so the processing isn't too slow. This module does that by processing the arrays and calling setImmediate once every 10ms or so, not too much, not too little. This interval is configurable of course.

const cooperative = require('cooperative')

let veryLargeArray = [1, 2, 3, ...]

let resultsPromise = cooperative.map(veryLargeArray, (item, index) => {
  // some involved operation
})

// continue to process other IO, UI events, etc

let results = await resultsPromise

map

let mappedResults = await cooperative.map(array, mapper, options)

• array - an array
• mapper(item, index) - a function taking each array item and index, and returning either a value or a Promise of a value.
• mappedResults - the corresponding results of mapper for each item in array

filter

let filteredArray = await cooperative.filter(array, predicate, options)

• array - an array
• predicate(item, index) - a function taking each array item and index, and returning either a value or a Promise of a value. If the value is truthy then the item is returned in the
• filteredArray - the items in array for which predicate returned a truthy value

forEach

await cooperative.forEach(array, action, options)

• array - an array
• action(item, index) - a function taking each array item and index and performing an action. If the return value is a promise, then forEach will wait for all promises to complete.

reduce

let reducedResults = await cooperative.reduce(array, operator, initial, options)

• array - an array
• operator(accumulator, item, index) - a function taking an accumulator, each array item and index. The return value is the accumulator for the operator call on the next item.
• initial - the value of the first accumulator
• reducedResults - the last accumulator

mapObject

let mappedObject = await cooperative.mapObject(object, mapper, options)

• object - an object
• mapper(value, key) - a function taking each value and key in object, the value returned is placed into a new object at key. This function can return a promise.
• mappedObject - a new object with it's values mapped by mapper

Options

• options.interval - the amount of time in ms to allow processing before calling setInterval, defaults to 10ms.

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