It was quite sometime since I wrote a blog post with an error message in the title. However I have now got this error so many times, and keep scratching my head every time. Also I think I can explain why it happens.
Here’s an example on how to make this error occur, from the co-monk library README (not anymore maybe):
Running that code (either with “node –harmony koaErrorFail.js” or test it with “mocha –harmony-generators koaErrorFail.js”) fail with the error from the title of the blog post:
yield users.remove({});
^^^^^
SyntaxError: Unexpected identifier
At this point you start to think that you forgot to run the example with the --harmony flag. But of course you do that, right?
Ah, maybe you are running the wrong version of Node. Again, no. You’re doing it right. Right?
However this code is not running within a generator function. And the keyword yield is just allowed within a generator function. In fact, to my understanding, a function is a generator function if it has an asterisk before the name of the function and one or more yields within the function.
But we want to say yield.
The yield is good. It’s what helps us get non-blocking code. You are basically telling node to do something else while we wait for this operations. Like callbacks but without yuck. But there has to be a generator function around it. And someone to drive the generator for us. I mean that can keep track on where we were when we waited for the next yield. There’s has to be someone that takes care of this generator async flow control goodness. Someone greater than us. Someone like co.
Co is a neat little library that lets you “write non-blocking code in a nice-ish way”. That’s all very complicated if you ask me. But let’s show how this co could be used to help us fix the error we ran into before:
Here we can see that the code, from our failing example is wrapped in a generator function (note the asterisk). This (anonymous) generator function is then passed to the co-library constructor function. Finally we also invoke the function that co-returns, right away, hence the “})(); on line 20.
Summary and hat tipping
I would not have grasped this without this awesome article by Zef. Not only did he write that article but he also helped me when I reached out to him on Twitter. Thank you mr Zef, my hat is tipped towards you. Loudly (?)
Summing up the problem would be something like this:
- The “Unexpected identifier” is not really users (in my example), but rather that yield is not valid outside a generator function.
- We can create an anonymous generator function by wrapping the code in “function *(){ // code }”
- Only problem left, is that we need someone that calls and drives through that function for us, continuing after a yield is reached for example. That could be co, for example.
- The co constructor takes a generator function as parameter making our entire wrapping for this into “co(function *(){ // code })();”
I can now find eternal peace. I will probably never be able to explain this again, but then I can come back to this post and “the time I understood generators”.