Return a value from an asynchronous function call

David Y.

—January 30, 2023

The ProblemThe Problem

How to access a return value from an asynchronous function call in JavaScript?

The SolutionThe Solution

In modern JavaScript, we can use await when calling asynchronous functions to pause the execution of the current function until a value is returned. This allows us to write and reason about asynchronous code as if it were synchronous.

The code below provides an example:

async function asyncHelloWorld() {
  return "Hello world!";
}

async function asyncCaller() {
  const result = await asyncHelloWorld();
  console.log(result); // will print "Hello world!"
}

asyncCaller();

Note that await can only be called from within asynchronous functions or top-level code inside a module.