Promise() constructor

The Promise constructor is primarily used to wrap functions that do not already support promises.

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Syntax

new Promise(executor)

Parameters

executor

A function that is passed with the arguments resolve and reject. The executor function is executed immediately by the Promise implementation, passing resolve and reject functions (the executor is called before the Promise constructor even returns the created object). The resolve and reject functions, when called, resolve or reject the promise, respectively. The executor normally initiates some asynchronous work, and then, once that completes, either calls the resolve function to resolve the promise or else rejects it if an error occurred. If an error is thrown in the executor function, the promise is rejected. The return value of the executor is ignored.

Examples

A Promise object is created using the new keyword and its constructor. This constructor takes a function, called the "executor function", as its parameter. This function should take two functions as parameters. The first of these functions (resolve) is called when the asynchronous task completes successfully and returns the results of the task as a value. The second (reject) is called when the task fails, and returns the reason for failure, which is typically an error object.

const myFirstPromise = new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
  // do something asynchronous which eventually calls either:
  //
  //   resolve(someValue)        // fulfilled
  // or
  //   reject("failure reason")  // rejected
});

To provide a function with promise functionality, simply have it return a promise:

function myAsyncFunction(url) {
  return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
    const xhr = new XMLHttpRequest() 
    xhr.open("GET", url) 
    xhr.onload = () => resolve(xhr.responseText) 
    xhr.onerror = () => reject(xhr.statusText) 
    xhr.send() 
  });
}

Specifications

Browser compatibility

See also

• Using Promises