What are the best practices for async Node.js production code?
Always handle errors with try/catch and a global handler, use Promise.all for parallel operations, keep the event loop non-blocking with async APIs, use async/await over callbacks, clean up resources, use streams for large data, and test both success and error paths.
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More FAQs in Async Best Practices in Node.js for Production Code
Because forgetting to close database connections, file handles, and event listeners causes memory leaks and resource exhaustion over time, which degrades production performance and can cause crashes. Always clean up in finally blocks or with proper teardown.
Because async bugs are subtle. Testing only the happy path misses error handling bugs that only appear in production when the API fails. Mock a rejected promise to test error handling and confirm it works before users hit it.
Never run heavy synchronous code on the main thread. Use async APIs for I/O, and offload CPU-heavy work to worker threads or separate processes. Profile with the Node.js inspector to find slow synchronous functions.
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