tryMax

Retry function or Promise to handle transient errors.

Easy to use retry behaviour for JavaScript and TypeScript.

Installation

npm install trymax

API - builder

tryMax(numberOfRetries: number).of(func: Function).delay(d: DelayFunction).retryIf(rc: MaybeAsyncFunction).call(...)

API - function wrapper

tryMax(numberOfRetrier: number, func: Function, options: Options): Function

Returns wrapped function with interface identical to func - funcArg => funcResult. Options (all are optional):

• delay - (n: number) => number defines the delay between retries, default: oneSecond
• retryCondition - () => boolean | funcResult defines if in this retry attempt the func should be executed or not, default: retryAlways

retryCondition The function of retryCondition is being executed between each attempt. If talking about REST request you can check the side-effects before you retry the function, if talking about database queries you can re-establish the connection in case of failure. You can also alter the result by responding arbitrary value (except from boolean).

Example:

#!/usr/bin/env ts-node
import axios from 'axios';
import { tryMax } from 'trymax';

const theUrl = 'http://localhost:3000';

async function main() {
    const errorProneGet = axios.get;
    const transientErrorSafeGet = tryMax(10, errorProneGet);
    const resp = await transientErrorSafeGet(theUrl);
    
    console.log(resp.data);
}

main();

Usage

tryMax wraps a function that returns a promise with retry behavior. The newly returned function has the same interface as the original one, but will retry N times if the original function fails.

See this artificial example with a function that will fail always the first two times:

let counter = 0;
const fail2Times = input => {
  counter++;
  if (counter > 2) {
    return Promise.resolve(input);
  }
  console.log(`fail ${counter}`);
  return Promise.reject('fail');
};

Now if you use tryMax wrapper you can call this function without worying about those failed attempts:

const { tryMax } = require('trymax');
const fail2TimesAssured = tryMax(3, fail2Times);
const result = await fail2TimesAssured('hello!');
console.log(result);

And the console output is:

fail 1
fail 2
hello!

Use-cases

Try-catch-like retry block

tryMax(5, async () => {
  // some code that may fail 
  // and you want to auto-retry it at most 5 times
})();

External services

• Retrying REST requests
• Re-establish database connection when it's broken and wait with sending query when the connection is back again
• Improve error mitigation on frontend and retry gently actions