real-cancellable-promise

A simple cancellable promise implementation for JavaScript and TypeScript.

Read the announcement post for a full explanation. In particular, see the "Prior art" section for a comparison to existing cancellable promise libraries.

• ⚡ Compatible with fetch, axios, and jQuery.ajax
• 🐦 Lightweight — zero dependencies and less than 1 kB minified and gzipped
• 🏭 Used in production by Interface Technologies
• 💻 Optimized for TypeScript
• ⚛ Built with React in mind
• 🔎 Compatible with react-query query cancellation out of the box

The Basics

yarn add real-cancellable-promise

import { CancellablePromise } from 'real-cancellable-promise';

const cancellablePromise = new CancellablePromise(normalPromise, cancel);

cancellablePromise.cancel();

await cancellablePromise; // throws a Cancellation object that subclasses Error

Important

The CancellablePromise constructor takes in a promise and a cancel function. Your cancel function MUST cause promise to reject with a Cancellation object.

This will NOT work, your callbacks with still run:

new CancellablePromise(normalPromise, () => {});

Usage with HTTP Libraries

How do I convert a normal Promise to a CancellablePromise?

fetch

export function cancellableFetch(
  input: RequestInfo,
  init: RequestInit = {}
): CancellablePromise<Response> {
  const controller = new AbortController();

  const promise = fetch(input, {
    ...init,
    signal: controller.signal,
  }).catch((e) => {
    if (e.name === 'AbortError') {
      throw new Cancellation();
    }

    // rethrow the original error
    throw e;
  });

  return new CancellablePromise<Response>(promise, () => controller.abort());
}

// Use just like normal fetch:
const cancellablePromise = cancellableFetch(url, {
  /* pass options here */
});

fetch with response handling

export function cancellableFetch<T>(
  input: RequestInfo,
  init: RequestInit = {}
): CancellablePromise<T> {
  const controller = new AbortController();

  const promise = fetch(input, {
    ...init,
    signal: controller.signal,
  })
    .then((response) => {
      // Handle the response object however you want
      if (!response.ok) {
        throw new Error(`Fetch failed with status code ${response.status}.`);
      }

      if (response.headers.get('content-type')?.includes('application/json')) {
        return response.json();
      } else {
        return response.text();
      }
    })
    .catch((e) => {
      if (e.name === 'AbortError') {
        throw new Cancellation();
      }

      // rethrow the original error
      throw e;
    });

  return new CancellablePromise<T>(promise, () => controller.abort());
}

axios

export function cancellableAxios<T>(
  config: AxiosRequestConfig
): CancellablePromise<T> {
  const source = axios.CancelToken.source();
  config = { ...config, cancelToken: source.token };

  const promise = axios(config)
    .then((response) => response.data)
    .catch((e) => {
      if (e instanceof axios.Cancel) {
        throw new Cancellation();
      }

      // rethrow the original error
      throw e;
    });

  return new CancellablePromise<T>(promise, () => source.cancel());
}

// Use just like normal axios:
const cancellablePromise = cancellableAxios({ url });

jQuery.ajax

export function cancellableJQueryAjax<T>(
  settings: JQuery.AjaxSettings
): CancellablePromise<T> {
  const xhr = $.ajax(settings);

  const promise = xhr.catch((e) => {
    if (e.statusText === 'abort') throw new Cancellation();

    // rethrow the original error
    throw e;
  });

  return new CancellablePromise<T>(promise, () => xhr.abort());
}

// Use just like normal $.ajax:
const cancellablePromise = cancellableJQueryAjax({ url, dataType: 'json' });

CodeSandbox: HTTP libraries

API Reference

CancellablePromise supports all the methods that the normal Promise object supports, except Promise.any (ES2021). See the API Reference for details.

Examples

React: Cancel the API call when the component unmounts

If your React component makes an API call, you probably don't care about the result of that API call after the component has unmounted. You can cancel the API in the cleanup function of an effect like this:

function listBlogPosts(): CancellablePromise<Post[]> {
  // call the API
}

export function Blog() {
  const [posts, setPosts] = useState<Post[]>([]);

  useEffect(() => {
    const cancellablePromise = listBlogPosts()
      .then(setPosts)
      .catch(console.error);

    // The promise will get canceled when the component unmounts
    return cancellablePromise.cancel;
  }, []);

  return (
    <div>
      {posts.map((p) => {
        /* ... */
      })}
    </div>
  );
}

Before React 18, this was necessary to prevent the infamous "setState after unmount" warning. This warning was removed from React in React 18 because setting state after the component unmounts is usually not indicative of a real problem.

CodeSandbox: prevent setState after unmount

React: Cancel the in-progress API call when query parameters change

Sometimes API calls have parameters, like a search string entered by the user. If the query parameters change, you should cancel any in-progress API calls.

function searchUsers(searchTerm: string): CancellablePromise<User[]> {
  // call the API
}

export function UserList() {
  const [searchTerm, setSearchTerm] = useState('');
  const [users, setUsers] = useState<User[]>([]);

  // In a real app you should debounce the searchTerm
  useEffect(() => {
    const cancellablePromise = searchUsers(searchTerm)
      .then(setUsers)
      .catch(console.error);

    // The old API call gets canceled whenever searchTerm changes. This prevents
    // setUsers from being called with incorrect results if the API calls complete
    // out of order.
    return cancellablePromise.cancel;
  }, [searchTerm]);

  return (
    <div>
      <SearchInput searchTerm={searchTerm} onChange={setSearchTerm} />
      {users.map((u) => {
        /* ... */
      })}
    </div>
  );
}

CodeSandbox: cancel the in-progress API call when query parameters change

Combine multiple API calls into a single async flow

The utility function buildCancellablePromise lets you capture every cancellable operation in a multi-step process. In this example, if bigQuery is canceled, each of the 3 API calls will be canceled (though some might have already completed).

function bigQuery(userId: number): CancellablePromise<QueryResult> {
  return buildCancellablePromise(async (capture) => {
    const userPromise = api.user.get(userId);
    const rolePromise = api.user.listRoles(userId);

    const [user, roles] = await capture(
      CancellablePromise.all([userPromise, rolePromise])
    );

    // User must be loaded before this query can run
    const customer = await capture(api.customer.get(user.customerId));

    return { user, roles, customer };
  });
}

Usage with react-query

If your query key changes and there's an API call in progress, react-query will cancel the CancellablePromise automatically.

CodeSandbox: react-query integration

Handling Cancellation

Usually, you'll want to ignore Cancellation objects that get thrown:

try {
  await capture(cancellablePromise);
} catch (e) {
  if (e instanceof Cancellation) {
    // do nothing — the component probably just unmounted.
    // or you could do something here it's up to you 😆
    return;
  }

  // log the error or display it to the user
}

Handling promises that can't truly be canceled

Sometimes you need to call an asynchronous function that doesn't support cancellation. In this case, you can use pseudoCancellable:

const cancellablePromise = pseudoCancellable(normalPromise);

// Later...
cancellablePromise.cancel();

await cancellablePromise; // throws Cancellation object if promise did not already resolve

CancellablePromise.delay

await CancellablePromise.delay(1000); // wait 1 second

Supported Platforms

Browser: anything that's not Internet Explorer.

React Native / Expo: should work in any recent release. AbortController has been available since 0.60.

Node.js: 14+. AbortController is only available in Node 15+. Both require() (CommonJS) and import (ES modules) are supported without use of a transpiler or bundler.

License

MIT

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md.