Node.js : Using Promises with mongoosejs

http://blog.revathskumar.com/2015/07/using-promises-with-mongoosejs.html

I was using mongoosejs for connecting mongoDB from my NodeJS app. When an action involve mulitple queries it tend to be callback hell.

I didn’t used populate method for loading related data to demonstate the promises.

I start with connecting mongoose with the mongoDB.

// connection.js
var mongoose = require('mongoose');
mongoose.connect('mongodb://localhost/my_db');

var db = mongoose.connection;

db.on('error', console.error.bind(console, 'Connection Error : '));
db.once('open', function(){
  console.log('Connection ok!');
});

module.exports = mongoose;

And mongoose models looks like

// User model
// models/user.js
var mongoose = require('../connection');
var Schema = mongoose.Schema;
var ObjectId = Schema.ObjectId;

var UserSchema = new Schema({
  email: String,
  access_token: String,
  name: String,
  username: { type: String,required: true, index: { unique: true, sparse: true }}
});

//Project model
// models/project.js
var mongoose = require('../connection');
var Schema = mongoose.Schema;
var ObjectId = Schema.ObjectId;

var ProjectSchema = new Schema({
  name: String,
  user_id: {type: ObjectId, ref: 'User'},
});

//Issue model
// models/issue.js
var mongoose = require('../connection');
var Schema = mongoose.Schema;
var ObjectId = Schema.ObjectId;

var IssueSchema = new Schema({
  title: String,
  body: String,
  project_id: {type: ObjectId, ref: 'Project'},
});

So when I need to list all the issues of a project I need to fetch the User then the Project and the list issues of that project. Let the route for the action like /:username/:project/issues. So Initially my action code looks like,

var User = require('./models/user');
var Project = require('./models/project');
var Issue = require('./models/issue');

exports.index = function (req, res) {
  var username = req.params.username;
  var project = req.params.project;

  User.findOne({username: username}, function(err, user){
    if(err) {
      console.log(err);
      return
    }
    Project.findOne({name: project, user: user._id}, function(err, project){
      if(err) {
        console.log(err);
        return
      }

      Issues.find({project_id: project._id}, function(err, issues){
        if(err) {
          console.log(err);
          return
        }

        res.render('./views/issues/index', {user: user, project: poject, issues: issues});
      })
    });
  });
}

But this code looks difficult to maintain for me. I usually uses promises to avoid callback hell. So I thought of using promises with mongoosejs since they have inbuilt support for it. So I rewrote my code with promises

var User = require('./models/user');
var Project = require('./models/project');
var Issue = require('./models/issue');

exports.index = function (req, res) {
  var username = req.params.username;
  var project = req.params.project;

  User.findOne({username: username}).exec()
    .then(function(user){
      var result = [];
      return Project.findOne({name: project, user_id: user._id}).exec()
        .then(function(project){
          return [user, project];
        });
    })
    .then(function(result){
      var project = result[1];
      return Issues.find({project_id: project._id}).exec()
        .then(function(issues) {
          result.push(issues);
          return result;
        })
    })
    .then(function(result){
      var user = result[0];
      var project = result[1];
      var issues = result[2];

      res.render('./views/issues/index', {user: user, project: project, issues: issues});
    })
    .then(undefined, function(err){
      //Handle error
    })
}

Have you noticed the use of exec() method? In mongoose, exec method will execute the query and return a Promise. We can make this code even better using populate method, Since I am learning this is far better than before and let the populate method be subject for another blog post. ;)

Comments are welcome.