Implementing parallel asynchrony using q.all q.js in a node.js application

Question

Background briefing: I wrote the code below to instruct node.js: (1) to assemble an HTML page from three text files in which I stored the pageheader, pagebody, and pagefooter components, respectively. Obviously, these fragments of the page must be assembled in the correct order. On the other hand, there is generally no requirement that these fragments of pages be extracted from their text files in any order before they are assembled. And I want to take advantage of this by implementing parallel asynchrony.

Implementation Code:

var sys = require('sys'),
http = require('http'),
fs = require('fs'),
Q = require('q'),
fullpage, pageheader, pagebody, pagefooter;

fullpage = '';

fs_readheader = fs.readFile('./htmlfiles.1', 'utf-8', function (err, data) {
   if (err) { throw err; }
   return pageheader = data;
});

fs_readbody = fs.readFile('./htmlfiles.2', 'utf-8', function (err, data) {
  if (err) { throw err; }
  return pagebody = data;
});

fs_readfooter = fs.readFile('./htmlfiles.3', 'utf-8', function (err, data) {
  if (err) { throw err; }
  return pagefooter = data;
});

finish = function(err, data) {
  if (err) { throw err; }
  console.log(pageheader);
  data = pageheader + pagebody + pagefooter;
  console.log(data);
  return fullpage = data;
}();


Q.all([fs_readheader,fs_readbody,fs_readfooter]).then(finish);


http.createServer(function(request, response) {
  response.writeHeader(200, {"Content-Type": "text/html"});
  response.write(fullpage);
  response.end();
}).listen(8001);

Problem: the node.js server doesn’t display anything at 127.0.0.1:8001 I expected, of course, the full rendering of the HTML page. I am using version 1.00 q.js, which is the latest version of q.js at this point in time.

Aftermath: - - :

var http = require('http'),
  fs = require('fs'),
  Q = require('q');

var readFileP = Q.denodeify(fs.readFile);

http.createServer(function(request, response) {
  Q.all([ readFileP('./htmlfiles.1', 'utf-8'),
          readFileP('./htmlfiles.2', 'utf-8'),
          readFileP('./htmlfiles.3', 'utf-8') ])
    .done(function(content){
        response.writeHead(200, {"Content-Type": "text/html"});
        response.end(content.join(''));
    }); 

}).listen(8001);

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Answer 1

SLaks promises. , /, promises , . promises, , , , , .

, promises, Q.denodeify, Q.ninvoke, Q.nfapply .. . Node. Q doc. , , Node , .

- , . :

var sys = require('sys'),
    http = require('http'),
    fs = require('fs'),
    Q = require('q'),
    fullpage, pageheader, pagebody, pagefooter;

var readFileP = Q.denodeify(fs.readFile);

var fsReadheader = readFileP('./file1.html', 'utf-8');
var fsReadBody = readFileP('./file2.html', 'utf-8');
var fsReadFooter = readFileP('./file3.html', 'utf-8');

//  This is where you had Q.all before - which is probably not what you want,
// or did you want to just build the page once and have it static for the life
// of the app? If that is the case, promises are kind of pointless and you may
// as well K.I.S.S. and just read the bits synchronously at startup

http.createServer(function(request, response) {
    // you should probably wait to write out the response until you know if you have success.
    // but again, maybe you do want this to be totally static content
    response.writeHead(200, {"Content-Type": "text/html"});
    // I am assuming you wanted to load the files at request time, possibly
    // in preparation to adapting your code to make ti more dynamic.
    Q.all([fsReadheader,fsReadBody,fsReadFooter])
        .then(function (x) {
            // this was your old 'finish' function - doesn't really do much.
            // I used join instead of concatenating. less typing. And no typing
            // if you ever add file4
            return x.join();})
        .then(function(content){
            // You could response.write() as well, but you can send data with .end()
            response.end(content);
        })
        .fail(function(e){
            // here is where your error handler goes. any error will end up here.'
            // you could have more granular erro handling
            response.writeHead(500, 'Bad news, Tex');
            response.end('No dice');
        });
    //
}).listen(8001);

, , :

var http = require('http'),
    fs = require('fs'),
    Q = require('q');

var readFileP = Q.denodeify(fs.readFile);

http.createServer(function(request, response) {
    Q.all([ readFileP('./file1.html', 'utf-8'),
            readFileP('./file2.html', 'utf-8'),
            readFileP('./file3.html', 'utf-8') ])
        .then(function(content){
            response.writeHead(200, {"Content-Type": "text/html"});
            response.end(content.join());
        })
        .fail(function(e){
            response.writeHead(500, 'Bad news, Tex');
            response.end('No dice');
        });
    //
}).listen(8001);