Usage in Deno
import { type Process } from "node:process";
Process.nextTick(callback: Function,...args: any[],): void
process.nextTick() adds callback to the "next tick queue". This queue is
fully drained after the current operation on the JavaScript stack runs to
completion and before the event loop is allowed to continue. It's possible to
create an infinite loop if one were to recursively call process.nextTick().
See the Event Loop guide for more background.
import { nextTick } from 'node:process';
console.log('start');
nextTick(() => {
console.log('nextTick callback');
});
console.log('scheduled');
// Output:
// start
// scheduled
// nextTick callback
This is important when developing APIs in order to give users the opportunity to assign event handlers after an object has been constructed but before any I/O has occurred:
import { nextTick } from 'node:process';
function MyThing(options) {
this.setupOptions(options);
nextTick(() => {
this.startDoingStuff();
});
}
const thing = new MyThing();
thing.getReadyForStuff();
// thing.startDoingStuff() gets called now, not before.
It is very important for APIs to be either 100% synchronous or 100% asynchronous. Consider this example:
// WARNING! DO NOT USE! BAD UNSAFE HAZARD!
function maybeSync(arg, cb) {
if (arg) {
cb();
return;
}
fs.stat('file', cb);
}
This API is hazardous because in the following case:
const maybeTrue = Math.random() > 0.5;
maybeSync(maybeTrue, () => {
foo();
});
bar();
It is not clear whether foo() or bar() will be called first.
The following approach is much better:
import { nextTick } from 'node:process';
function definitelyAsync(arg, cb) {
if (arg) {
nextTick(cb);
return;
}
fs.stat('file', cb);
}
void