92

If I have an array of urls:

var urls = ['1.txt', '2.txt', '3.txt']; // these text files contain "one", "two", "three", respectively.

And I want to build an object that looks like this:

var text = ['one', 'two', 'three'];

I’ve been trying to learn to do this with fetch, which of course returns Promises.

Some things I’ve tried that don’t work:

var promises = urls.map(url => fetch(url));
var texts = [];
Promise.all(promises)
  .then(results => {
     results.forEach(result => result.text()).then(t => texts.push(t))
  })

This doesn’t look right, and in any case it doesn’t work — I don’t end up with an array ['one', 'two', 'three'].

Is using Promise.all the right approach here?

2
  • That looks like a bracketing mistake. Did you really intend to call .then on the return value of .forEach(…), or rather on ….text()?
    – Bergi
    Commented Jul 29, 2015 at 21:35
  • Where do you look at / log texts and observe it to be still empty?
    – Bergi
    Commented Jul 29, 2015 at 21:36

9 Answers 9

173

Yes, Promise.all is the right approach, but you actually need it twice if you want to first fetch all urls and then get all texts from them (which again are promises for the body of the response). So you'd need to do

Promise.all(urls.map(u=>fetch(u))).then(responses =>
    Promise.all(responses.map(res => res.text()))
).then(texts => {
    …
})

Your current code is not working because forEach returns nothing (neither an array nor a promise).

Of course you can simplify that and start with getting the body from each response right after the respective fetch promise fulfilled:

Promise.all(urls.map(url =>
    fetch(url).then(resp => resp.text())
)).then(texts => {
    …
})

or the same thing with await:

const texts = await Promise.all(urls.map(async url => {
  const resp = await fetch(url);
  return resp.text();
}));
6
  • 3
    Addressing something I sensed in the question: You can't "extract" results to an outside variable because of how async works in JavaScript, but you can use generators or async/await to simulate it. See this answer for a complete guide on asynchronisity in JS. Commented Jul 29, 2015 at 21:49
  • this looks amazing ! but I can't wrap my head around :( javascript is a strange language
    – yota
    Commented Aug 23, 2017 at 7:14
  • @sansSpoon Are you sure you used the concise arrow body that I have in my answer? It does implicitly return the promise.
    – Bergi
    Commented Apr 24, 2018 at 10:38
  • Doh, of course, palm > face. I'm always mixing my es5/6. Thanks.
    – sansSpoon
    Commented Apr 24, 2018 at 11:07
  • 1
    @1252748 Yes, the Promise.all() returns a single promise for an array or response objects. But then, responses.map(res => res.text()) produces another array of promises which needs a second Promise.all.
    – Bergi
    Commented May 11, 2019 at 9:09
33

For some reason neither of Bergi's examples worked for me. It would simply give me empty results. After some debugging it seemes like the promise would return before the fetch had finished, hence the empty results.

However, Benjamin Gruenbaum had an answer here earlier, but deleted it. His method did work for me, so I'll just copy-paste it here, as an alternative in case anyone else runs into any problems with the first solution here.

var promises = urls.map(url => fetch(url).then(y => y.text()));
Promise.all(promises).then(results => {
    // do something with results.
});
2
  • Thank you, I've looked at several SO answers pertaining to doing something only after the promised task(s) have actually finished working. This answer actually waited for all files to finish fetching before triggering my callback.
    – Reahreic
    Commented Apr 1, 2021 at 13:06
  • There is really no difference between your (/ Benjamin Gruenbaum's) answer and the second snippet by Bergi. — Suppose I replace your second promises with urls.map(url => fetch(url).then(y => y.text())) and then replace your y with resp, an finally replace your results with texts. The only remainig difference to Bergi's second snippet is the comment // do something with results, and where the lines break (well — and the final semicolon). (Might this explain why Benjamin Gruenbaum removed his answer?) Commented May 20, 2021 at 9:45
17

You should use map instead of forEach:

Promise.all(urls.map(url => fetch(url)))
.then(resp => Promise.all( resp.map(r => r.text()) ))
.then(result => {
    // ...
});
3
  • 2
    why use map instead of forEach? just to ask? Commented Jul 17, 2018 at 15:27
  • 2
    @ChristianMatthew map returns each result of fetch(url) while forEach doesn't return anything. See either the accepted answer or stackoverflow.com/a/34426481/1639983.
    – LNO
    Commented Jul 25, 2018 at 21:46
  • thanks @HoldenLewis that is the answer i was thinking of Commented Jul 26, 2018 at 18:36
9

Here is a clean way to do it.

const requests = urls.map((url) => fetch(url)); 
const responses = await Promise.all(requests); 
const promises = responses.map((response) => response.text());
return await Promise.all(promises);
5

The suggested array urls = ['1.txt', '2.txt', '3.txt'] does not make much sense to me, so I will instead use:

urls = ['https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/todos/2',
        'https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/todos/3']

The JSONs of the two URLs:

{"userId":1,"id":2,"title":"quis ut nam facilis et officia qui",
 "completed":false}
{"userId":1,"id":3,"title":"fugiat veniam minus","completed":false}

The goal is to get an array of objects, where each object contains the title value from the corresponding URL.

To make it a little more interesting, I will assume that there is already an array of names that I want the array of URL results (the titles) to be merged with:

namesonly = ['two', 'three']

The desired output is an array of objects:

[{"name":"two","loremipsum":"quis ut nam facilis et officia qui"},
{"name":"three","loremipsum":"fugiat veniam minus"}]

where I have changed the attribute name title to loremipsum.

const namesonly = ['two', 'three'];
const urls = ['https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/todos/2',
  'https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/todos/3'];

Promise.all(urls.map(url => fetch(url)
  .then(response => response.json())
  .then(responseBody => responseBody.title)))
  .then(titles => {
    const names = namesonly.map(value => ({ name: value }));
    console.log('names: ' + JSON.stringify(names));
    const fakeLatins = titles.map(value => ({ loremipsum: value }));
    console.log('fakeLatins:\n' + JSON.stringify(fakeLatins));
    const result =
      names.map((item, i) => Object.assign({}, item, fakeLatins[i]));
    console.log('result:\n' + JSON.stringify(result));
  })
  .catch(err => {
    console.error('Failed to fetch one or more of these URLs:');
    console.log(urls);
    console.error(err);
  });
.as-console-wrapper { max-height: 100% !important; top: 0; }

Reference

2

In case, if you are using axios. We can achieve this like:

const apiCall = (endpoint:string)=> axios.get(${baseUrl}/${endpoint})

axios.all([apiCall('https://first-endpoint'),apiCall('https://second-endpoint')]).then(response => {
            response.forEach(values => values)
            }).catch(error => {})  
1
  • 1
    Your answer could be improved with additional supporting information. Please edit to add further details, such as citations or documentation, so that others can confirm that your answer is correct. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center.
    – Community Bot
    Commented Sep 30, 2021 at 11:39
1

The following also works for me.

    Promise.all([
      fetch(QUESTIONS_API_BASE_URL).then(res => res.json()),
      fetch(SUBMISSIONS_API_BASE_URL).then(res => res.json())
    ])
    .then(console.log)
1
// Here, you have an array called todos containing three URLs.

const todos = [
  "https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/todos/1",
  "https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/todos/2",
  "https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/todos/3",
];

// asunchronous function to fetch todo of the respective url

const fetchTodo = async (url) => {
  const res = await fetch(url);
  if (!res.ok) {
    throw new Error(`HTTP error! status: ${res.status}`);
  }
  return res.json();
};


// The todos.map((item) => fetchTodo(item)) part creates an array of promises by mapping each URL to the result of the fetchTodo function. Promise.all then waits for all these promises to settle (either resolve or reject).

Promise.all(todos.map((item) => fetchTodo(item)))
  .then((res) => {
    console.log(res);
  })
  .catch((err) => console.error(err));

// fetches JSON data from multiple URLs concurrently using Promise.all,
0

Async/await version

var promises = urls.map(async (url) => {
    let res = await fetch(url)
    return await res.json()
})
const results = await Promise.all(promises)