What is the difference between async.waterfall and async.series

javascript node.js asynchronous node-async
Bruce Dou picture Bruce Dou · Feb 13, 2012 · Viewed 32.4k times · Source

The nodejs async module: https://github.com/caolan/async provides 2 similar methods, async.waterfall and async.series.

What is the difference between them?

Answer

Twisol picture Twisol · Feb 13, 2012

It appears that async.waterfall allows each function to pass its results on to the next function, while async.series passes all results to the final callback. At a higher level, async.waterfall would be for a data pipeline ("given 2, multiply it by 3, add 2, and divide by 17"), while async.series would be for discrete tasks that must be performed in order, but are otherwise separate.

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