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Gladys Pascual
Gladys Pascual

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Re-writing then/catch to async/await

There are two main ways to handle asynchronous code in JavaScript:

  • then/catch (ES6), and
  • async/await (ES7).

In this post, I wanted to show to convert a then/catch syntax into an async/await syntax.

In this example, I will be using axios, a JavaScript library that allows making an HTTP request, and an alternative to the .fetch() method. Some of the advantages of using axios over the fetch method are that axios performs automatic transforms of JSON data and has better browser support compared to the fetch method.

then/catch

  useEffect(() => {
    axios
      .get(
        `https://finnhub.io/api/v1/news?category=general&token=${process.env.REACT_APP_API_KEY}`
      )
      .then((response) => {
        const firstTenNews = response.data.slice(0, 10);
        setCurrentNews(firstTenNews);
        setLoading(false);
      })
      .catch((err) => {
        console.log("Error fetching and parsing data", err);
        setLoading(false);
      });
  }, []);
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async/await

  useEffect(() => {
    async function fetchCurrentNewsData() {
      try {
        const result = await axios.get(
          `https://finnhub.io/api/v1/news?category=general&token=${process.env.REACT_APP_API_KEY}`
        );
        const firstTenNews = result.data.slice(0, 10);
        setCurrentNews(firstTenNews);
        setLoading(false);
      } catch (err) {
        console.log("Error fetching and parsing data", err);
        setLoading(false);
      }
    }
    fetchCurrentNewsData();
  }, []);
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I hope this helps. Some may argue that the async/await syntax is more readable compared to the then/catch syntax. What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments below if you have a preferred syntax 👩🏻‍💻

Latest comments (3)

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thomasrosen profile image
Thomas Rosen

What about the error handling in the async/await example?
Would I need a try/catch block? Or is the error expected to bubble to the uppermost catch?

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gladyspascual profile image
Gladys Pascual

That's a good 'catch' 😎 I've added the try/catch on the async/await syntax there, thanks for highlighting 🙌🏽

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sebbdk profile image
Sebastian Vargr • Edited

Async functions are just syntactical-sugar for Promises last I checked, so yes you need a try/catch. :)