CLS and Promises

[silverbp]

Is there a way to patch this so CLS works inside the Promises without having to fork and patch the entire thing with cls-bluebird?

[analog-nico]

Request-Promise uses just one promise internally which is instantiated when a request is made. That means you just need to call patchBluebird(...) of cls-bluebird before you execute your first request.

In comparison to the patch code of your fork you may even do the patching after you require Request-Promise:

var rp = require('request-promise');
var clsBluebird = require('cls-bluebird');

clsBluebird(...);

rp('http://google.com').then(...);

IMHO with this code there is no need to fork Request-Promise anymore. However, does this solution meet your expectation?

EDIT: The code can't work because Request-Promise requires a fresh prototype of Bluebird!

[silverbp]

wouldn't this require that I have bluebird as a package as well, maybe it's a mis-understanding of how this works.
I can't patch bluebird cause I'm not using it in my own code.
inside of cls-bluebird, it's requiring bluebird.

I was under the assumption that npm modules are scoped to the library that adds it as a dependency.

If my assumption above is correct (it's probably not). How would I get to bluebird inside of request-promise to patch it without forking it?

I would love to not have to fork it.

[silverbp]

I think mongoose went down the route of giving you the option of supplying your own promise library and since promises are built into es6, maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to follow that convention on libraries that use promises (give people the option of supplying a promise library or maybe even checking to see if one exists globally (es6)).

[analog-nico]

Ah yes, you are right! But anyways, to not having multiple versions of Bluebird laying around in your project Request-Promise intentionally has a loose version requirement for Bluebird (^2.3). If you already have installed Bluebird in your project then this version will be used by Request-Promise as well. That is NPM won't install another version of Bluebird anymore. Then the above code would actually work. However, as I write this I get the feeling this is not a save / clean solution.

I think CLS is a really important concept and should be treated accordingly. How about we add the following method to Request-Promise?

rp.bindCLS(/* ns */);

[silverbp]

yes the above would work as well! thanks!

[analog-nico]

I just realized that cls-bluebird should not work even for your fork because Request-Promise requires a fresh Bluebird prototype (require("bluebird/js/main/promise")() - see details here) and cls-bluebird therefore gets a different Bluebird prototype (require('bluebird')).

Could you double check that?

[silverbp]

It works, cls-bluebird has bluebird as a peerdependency so it's looking for it in the parent project. I was wondering that too, till I looked in the package.json

The fork is currently working for me.

[silverbp]

Oh, I don't know about the fresh bluebird prototype though, it passes my unit test :).. it has access to the CLS namespace in the success callback of the promise when hitting google.com.

[silverbp]

the main bluebird entry point is this file (bluebird.js)

"use strict";
var old;
if (typeof Promise !== "undefined") old = Promise;
function noConflict() {
    try { if (Promise === bluebird) Promise = old; }
    catch (e) {}
    return bluebird;
}
var bluebird = require("./promise.js")();
bluebird.noConflict = noConflict;
module.exports = bluebird;

and it ultimately requires promise.js?

[silverbp]

I'm not sure how what their saying even relates, it looks like bluebird stomps on the global Promise and you wouldn't want your blueprint of a dependency lib setting the 'old' property after a blueprint lib in a app set it, otherwise the behavior of calling 'noConflict' would have unexpected results. It might restore it to another bluebird promise instead of the old one..

[silverbp]

so someone should do a pull request into cls-blueprint to not require blueprint.js, but instead promise.js like you guys are doing, to prevent the above.. or you could just replicate the code and change it :), it's not a lot of code.

[analog-nico]

:D good point.

cls-bluebird could only also require promise.js if it afterwards returns the patched Bluebird prototype. If the user requires Bluebird himself - in any way - it will always get a different Bluebird prototype.

[analog-nico]

I just checked Bluebird's code and find it really puzzling that your fork actually works. It shouldn't because the Bluebird prototype Request-Promise is using doesn't get patched. At least from what I can tell by reading all the relevant code. ;D

Anyway, I am now tending towards your suggestion to follow mongoose's strategy. Partly because issue #43 suggests some larger changes that result in being able to inject Bluebird - which might be CLS patched by the user - into Request-Promise.

[silverbp]

give me a few minutes, I'll put a unit test together in my fork, the unit test I have working is in a different library.

[silverbp]

I can't get it to fail now (sigh). I swear I just recently switched it and it failed, now it won't fail... So maybe the patch isn't doing anything.

[silverbp]

I added a unit test anyway to that fork, that's similar to what we're doing where I swear it wasn't working, the only problem with my unit test is if you don't enable the patch, it still passes. So I don't know anymore.

[analog-nico]

Working on the other issues was overdue anyway. I'll take all requirements - including CLS - and work on the next version of Request-Promise this weekend.

[analog-nico]

I just released version 1.0.0 which includes the rp.bindCLS(/* ns */); function which we discussed. For details see the README section for that.

I am sorry, but I can only call this feature experimental. Since cls-bluebird is so quick and dirty it still misses a lot of use cases. Namely not allowing the user to bind the same namespace twice and allowing the user to bind multiple namespaces.

I am tracking cls-bluebird on VersionEye and will look into its code once a new version is released.

Thanks for getting this ball rolling @silverbp !

[analog-nico]

Hi @silverbp , I just released request-promise@4.0.0 which drops CLS support due to numerous complaints about the way I added its support. However, I came up with an alternative solution which should be very easy for you to migrate to: https://github.com/request/request-promise/wiki/Getting-Back-Support-for-Continuation-Local-Storage

I hope this introduces no trouble for you! And let me know if the migration doesn't work in one way or another so I can help.