How to return single promise after for loop (which produces a promise on every iteration) is complete?

Question

I have a problem with my promise return code, I have a function getTagQuotes which contains a for loop which can make multiple calls an API to return data into an array.

How my code for this begins below:

// If there are tags, then wait for promise here:
if (tags.length > 0) {

    // Setting promise var to getTagQuotes:
    var promise = getTagQuotes(tags).then(function() {
        console.log('promise =',promise);

        // This array should contain 1-3 tags:
        console.log('tweetArrayObjsContainer =',tweetArrayObjsContainer);

        // Loop through to push array objects into chartObj:
        for (var i=0; i<tweetArrayObjsContainer.length; i++) {
            chartObj.chartData.push(tweetArrayObjsContainer[i]);
        }

        // Finally draw the chart:
        chartDirective = ScopeFactory.getScope('chart');
        chartDirective.nvd3.drawChart(chartObj.chartData);
    });
}

My getTagQuotes function with the promise return:

function getTagQuotes(tags) {
    var deferred = $q.defer(); // setting the defer
    var url      = 'app/api/social/twitter/volume/';

    // My for loop, which only returns ONCE, even if there are 3 tags
    for (var i=0; i<tags.length; i++) {
        var loopStep = i;
        rawTagData   = [];

        // The return statement
        return GetTweetVolFactory.returnTweetVol(url+tags[i].term_id)
            .success(function(data, status, headers, config) {
                rawTagData.push(data);

                // One the last loop, call formatTagData
                // which fills the tweetArrayObjsContainer Array
                if (loopStep === (rawTagData.length - 1)) {
                    formatTagData(rawTagData);
                    deferred.resolve();
                    return deferred.promise;
                }
            });
    }

    function formatTagData(rawData) {

        for (var i=0; i<rawData.length; i++) {
            var data_array = [];
            var loopNum = i;

            for (var j=0; j<rawData[loopNum].frequency_counts.length; j++) {
                var data_obj = {};
                data_obj.x = rawData[loopNum].frequency_counts[j].start_epoch;
                data_obj.y = rawData[loopNum].frequency_counts[j].tweets;
                data_array.push(data_obj);
            }

            var tweetArrayObj = {
                "key" : "Quantity"+(loopNum+1), "type" : "area", "yAxis" : 1, "values" : data_array
            };

            tweetArrayObjsContainer.push(tweetArrayObj);
        }
    }
}

Take notice of this line

return GetTweetVolFactory.returnTweetVol(url+tags[i].term_id)

it's inside my for loop:

for (var i=0; i<tags.length; i++)

Everything works great if I only have to loop through once. However as soon as there is another tag (up to 3) it still only returns the first loop/data. It does not wait till the for loop is done. Then return the promise. So my tweetArrayObjsContainer always only has the first tag.

Answer 1

Three issues:

1. you didn't return the deferred promise from the getTagQuotes method.
2. you were looking at i to see if you were through the loop, and the for loop is already completed (i == (tags.length - 1)) before the first success is even called.
3. you called return in the first iteration of the loop so that you didn't even get to the 2nd item.

Here's corrected code (didn't test it yet)

function getTagQuotes(tags) {
    var deferred = $q.defer(); // setting the defer
    var url      = 'app/api/social/twitter/volume/';
    var tagsComplete = 0;

    for (var i=0; i<tags.length; i++) {
        rawTagData   = [];
        GetTweetVolFactory.returnTweetVol(url+tags[i].term_id)
            .success(function(data, status, headers, config) {
                rawTagData.push(data);
                tagsComplete++;

                if (tagsComplete === tags.length) {
                    formatTagData(rawTagData);
                    deferred.resolve();
                }
            });
    }

    return deferred.promise;
}