How to properly break out of a promise chain?

Question

Based on the question here: jQuery chaining and cascading then's and when's and the accepted answer, I want to break the promise chain at a point but haven't yet found the correct way. There are multiple posts about this, but I am still lost.

Taking the example code from the original question:

Menus.getCantinas().then(function(cantinas){ // `then` is how we chain promises
    Menus.cantinas = cantinas;
    // if we need to aggregate more than one promise, we `$.when`
    return $.when(Menus.getMeals(cantinas), Menus.getSides(cantinas));
}).then(function(meals, sides){ // in jQuery `then` can take multiple arguments
    Menus.sides = sides; // we can fill closure arguments here
    Menus.meals = meals;
    return Menus.getAdditives(meals, sides); // again we chain
}).then(function(additives){
    Menus.additives = additives;
    return Menus; // we can also return non promises and chain on them if we want
}).done(function(){ // done terminates a chain generally.
     // edit HTML here
});

How would I break the chain if cantinas.length == 0? I would not want to get the meals, neither the additives, frankly I would want to call some kind of "empty result" callback. I have tried the following which is very ugly (but works...). Teach me the correct way. This still is a valid result, so not a "fail" per se, just empty result I would say.

var emptyResult = false;
Menus.getCantinas().then(function(cantinas){
    Menus.cantinas = cantinas;
    if (cantinas.length == 0) {
      emptyResult = true;
      return "emptyResult"; //unuglify me
    }
    return $.when(Menus.getMeals(cantinas), Menus.getSides(cantinas));
}).then(function(meals, sides){ 
    if (meals == "emptyResult") return meals;  //look at my ugliness...
    Menus.sides = sides;
    Menus.meals = meals;
    return Menus.getAdditives(meals, sides);
}).then(function(additives){
    if (additives == "emptyResult") return additives;
    Menus.additives = additives;
    return Menus;
}).done(function(){
   if (emptyResult)
     //do empty result stuff
   else
     // normal stuff
});

Answer 1

Sounds like you want to branch, not to break - you want to continue as usual to the done. A nice property of promises is that they don't only chain, but also can be nested and unnested without restrictions. In your case, you can just put the part of the chain that you want to "break" away inside your if-statement:

Menus.getCantinas().then(function(cantinas) {
    Menus.cantinas = cantinas;

    if (cantinas.length == 0)
        return Menus; // break!

    // else
    return $.when(Menus.getMeals(cantinas), Menus.getSides(cantinas))
    .then(function(meals, sides) {
        Menus.sides = sides;
        Menus.meals = meals;
        return Menus.getAdditives(meals, sides);
    }).then(function(additives) {
        Menus.additives = additives;
        return Menus;
    });
}).done(function(Menus) {
    // with no cantinas, or with everything
});