NodeJS - making the while loop synchronous

Question

NodeJS - making the while loop synchronous

I've got a following piece of code

var page = 2;
var last_page = 100;
while(page <= last_page) {
  request("http://some_json_server.com/data?page=" + page, function (error, response, body) {
    if (!error && response.statusCode == 200) {
      store_data(body)
    }
    page++;
  });                
}

I've done the following, but it is actually not retrieving anything. Am I doing this correctly?

var page = 2;
var last_page = 100;
while(page <= last_page) {
var async_arr = [];
async_arr.push(
  function(next) {
    request("http://some_api_url?page=" + page, function (error, response, body) {
      if (!error && response.statusCode == 200) {
        store_data(body);
      }
    });
  }
);

async.series(
  async_arr, done
);

javascript
node.js
asynchronous

Answer 1

With while you get a busy loop, which is counter-purpose in Node.

Make it a recursive function instead. Each call will be done in a separate tick.

var page = 2;
var last_page = 100;

(function loop() {
    if (page <= last_page) {
        request("/data?page=" + page, function (error, response, body) {
            if (!error && response.statusCode == 200) {
                store_data(body)
            }
            page++;
            loop();
        });
    }
}());

Answer 2

You're looking for async.whilst(). This solution is assuming you actually want to do each request after the other. As @UpTheCreek mentions (edit: the comment I referred to was edited) it would likely be possible to do it asynchronously and keep track of each result using async.parallel.

var page = 2,
    lastPage = 100;

async.whilst(function () {
  return page <= lastPage;
},
function (next) {
  request("http://some_json_server.com/data?page=" + page, function (error, response, body) {
    if (!error && response.statusCode == 200) {
      store_data(body)
    }
    page++;
    next();
  });
},
function (err) {
  // All things are done!
});