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doc, async_hooks: improve and add migration hints
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Add hints to migrate away from async hooks.
Change docs at various places to be more clear that resources are
internals and may change at any time.

PR-URL: nodejs#45369
Refs: nodejs#45335
Reviewed-By: Geoffrey Booth <[email protected]>
Reviewed-By: Rich Trott <[email protected]>
Reviewed-By: Matteo Collina <[email protected]>
Reviewed-By: Stephen Belanger <[email protected]>
Reviewed-By: Chengzhong Wu <[email protected]>
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Flarna authored Nov 10, 2022
1 parent 7b1e153 commit 81ab00d
Showing 1 changed file with 24 additions and 18 deletions.
42 changes: 24 additions & 18 deletions doc/api/async_hooks.md
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Expand Up @@ -6,6 +6,12 @@
<!-- source_link=lib/async_hooks.js -->

We strongly discourage the use of the `async_hooks` API.
Other APIs that can cover most of its use cases include:

* [`AsyncLocalStorage`][] tracks async context
* [`process.getActiveResourcesInfo()`][] tracks active resources

The `node:async_hooks` module provides an API to track asynchronous resources.
It can be accessed using:

Expand Down Expand Up @@ -329,18 +335,14 @@ The `type` is a string identifying the type of resource that caused
`init` to be called. Generally, it will correspond to the name of the
resource's constructor.

Valid values are:
The `type` of resources created by Node.js itself can change in any Node.js
release. Valid values include `TLSWRAP`,
`TCPWRAP`, `TCPSERVERWRAP`, `GETADDRINFOREQWRAP`, `FSREQCALLBACK`,
`Microtask`, and `Timeout`. Inspect the source code of the Node.js version used
to get the full list.

```text
FSEVENTWRAP, FSREQCALLBACK, GETADDRINFOREQWRAP, GETNAMEINFOREQWRAP, HTTPINCOMINGMESSAGE,
HTTPCLIENTREQUEST, JSSTREAM, PIPECONNECTWRAP, PIPEWRAP, PROCESSWRAP, QUERYWRAP,
SHUTDOWNWRAP, SIGNALWRAP, STATWATCHER, TCPCONNECTWRAP, TCPSERVERWRAP, TCPWRAP,
TTYWRAP, UDPSENDWRAP, UDPWRAP, WRITEWRAP, ZLIB, SSLCONNECTION, PBKDF2REQUEST,
RANDOMBYTESREQUEST, TLSWRAP, Microtask, Timeout, Immediate, TickObject
```

These values can change in any Node.js release. Furthermore users of [`AsyncResource`][]
likely provide other values.
Furthermore users of [`AsyncResource`][] create async resources independent
of Node.js itself.

There is also the `PROMISE` resource type, which is used to track `Promise`
instances and asynchronous work scheduled by them.
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -414,19 +416,19 @@ of propagating what resource is responsible for the new resource's existence.
##### `resource`

`resource` is an object that represents the actual async resource that has
been initialized. This can contain useful information that can vary based on
the value of `type`. For instance, for the `GETADDRINFOREQWRAP` resource type,
`resource` provides the host name used when looking up the IP address for the
host in `net.Server.listen()`. The API for accessing this information is
not supported, but using the Embedder API, users can provide
and document their own resource objects. For example, such a resource object
could contain the SQL query being executed.
been initialized. The API to access the object may be specified by the
creator of the resource. Resources created by Node.js itself are internal
and may change at any time. Therefore no API is specified for these.

In some cases the resource object is reused for performance reasons, it is
thus not safe to use it as a key in a `WeakMap` or add properties to it.

##### Asynchronous context example

The context tracking use case is covered by the stable API [`AsyncLocalStorage`][].
This example only illustrates async hooks operation but [`AsyncLocalStorage`][]
fits better to this use case.

The following is an example with additional information about the calls to
`init` between the `before` and `after` calls, specifically what the
callback to `listen()` will look like. The output formatting is slightly more
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -568,6 +570,9 @@ made to the `resource` object passed to `init` it is possible that `destroy`
will never be called, causing a memory leak in the application. If the resource
does not depend on garbage collection, then this will not be an issue.

Using the destroy hook results in additional overhead because it enables
tracking of `Promise` instances via the garbage collector.

#### `promiseResolve(asyncId)`

<!-- YAML
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -873,5 +878,6 @@ The documentation for this class has moved [`AsyncLocalStorage`][].
[`before` callback]: #beforeasyncid
[`destroy` callback]: #destroyasyncid
[`init` callback]: #initasyncid-type-triggerasyncid-resource
[`process.getActiveResourcesInfo()`]: process.md#processgetactiveresourcesinfo
[`promiseResolve` callback]: #promiseresolveasyncid
[promise execution tracking]: #promise-execution-tracking

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