Making setTimeout Async Friendly

I love using the Async/Await syntax in ES6+ javascript. It keeps things simple and clean. I try my damndest to avoid callbacks where possible in my code (unless a library I'm using expects or uses them — like with Express.js.)

I just want to say, I am by no means the author of this snippet, nor the first person to think it. Still, this is one of my favorite helper functions and I thought, why not share it — might make someone else's life easier too.

  export const asyncTimeout = (ms: number) => {
    return new Promise((resolve) => {
      setTimeout(resolve, ms);
    });
  };

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A simple function, that simply takes in the amount of milliseconds you wish to wait as a parameter. We then immediately return a new Promise, which is resolved when setTimeout completes.

In action, it may look like this.

  async function doStuff() {
    // doing stuff up here...
    await asyncTimeout(1000);
    // After waiting a second, continues doing stuff.
  }

‍

Simple and clean.