javascript - Node.js - wait for multiple async calls

Question

I'm trying to make multiple MongoDB queries before I render a Jade template, but I can't quite figure out how to wait until all the Mongo Queries are completed before rendering the template.

exports.init = function(req, res){


    var NYLakes = {};
    var NJLakes = {};
    var filterNY = {"State" : "NY"};
    db.collection('lakes').find(filterNY).toArray(function(err, result) {
        if (err) throw err;
        NYLakes = result;
    });

    var filterNJ = {"State" : "NJ"};
    db.collection('lakes').find(filterNJ).toArray(function(err, result) {
        if (err) throw err;
        NJLakes = result;
    });

    res.render('explore/index', {
            NYlakes: NYLakes,
            NJlakes: NJLakes
    });

};

Answer 1

I'm a big fan of underscore/lodash, so I usually use _.after, which creates a function that only executes after being called a certain number of times.

var finished = _.after(2, doRender);

asyncMethod1(data, function(err){
  //...
  finished();
});

asyncMethod2(data, function(err){
  //...
  finished();
})

function doRender(){
  res.render(); // etc
} 

Since javascript hoists the definition of functions defined with the function funcName() syntax, your code reads naturally: top-to-bottom.