Fetch: Abort

As we know, fetch returns a promise. And JavaScript generally has no concept of “aborting” a promise. So how can we abort a fetch?

There’s a special built-in object for such purposes: AbortController, that can be used to abort not only fetch, but other asynchronous tasks as well.

The usage is pretty simple:

• Step 1: create a controller:

  let controller = new AbortController();

  A controller is an extremely simple object.

  • It has a single method abort(), and a single property signal.
  • When abort() is called:
    • abort event triggers on controller.signal
    • controller.signal.aborted property becomes true.

  All parties interested to learn about abort() call set listeners on controller.signal to track it.

  Like this (without fetch yet):

  let controller = new AbortController();
  let signal = controller.signal;
  
  // triggers when controller.abort() is called
  signal.addEventListener('abort', () => alert("abort!"));
  
  controller.abort(); // abort!
  
  alert(signal.aborted); // true

• Step 2: pass the signal property to fetch option:

  let controller = new AbortController();
  fetch(url, {
    signal: controller.signal
  });

  The fetch method knows how to work with AbortController, it listens to abort on signal.

• Step 3: to abort, call controller.abort():

  controller.abort();

  We’re done: fetch gets the event from signal and aborts the request.

When a fetch is aborted, its promise rejects with an error AbortError, so we should handle it, e.g. in try..catch:

// abort in 1 second
let controller = new AbortController();
setTimeout(() => controller.abort(), 1000);

try {
  let response = await fetch('/article/fetch-abort/demo/hang', {
    signal: controller.signal
  });
} catch(err) {
  if (err.name == 'AbortError') { // handle abort()
    alert("Aborted!");
  } else {
    throw err;
  }
}

AbortController is scalable, it allows to cancel multiple fetches at once.

For instance, here we fetch many urls in parallel, and the controller aborts them all:

let urls = [...]; // a list of urls to fetch in parallel

let controller = new AbortController();

let fetchJobs = urls.map(url => fetch(url, {
  signal: controller.signal
}));

let results = await Promise.all(fetchJobs);

// if controller.abort() is called from elsewhere,
// it aborts all fetches

If we have our own asynchronous jobs, different from fetch, we can use a single AbortController to stop those, together with fetches.

We just need to listen to its abort event:

let urls = [...];
let controller = new AbortController();

let ourJob = new Promise((resolve, reject) => { // our task
  ...
  controller.signal.addEventListener('abort', reject);
});

let fetchJobs = urls.map(url => fetch(url, { // fetches
  signal: controller.signal
}));

// Wait for fetches and our task in parallel
let results = await Promise.all([...fetchJobs, ourJob]);

// if controller.abort() is called from elsewhere,
// it aborts all fetches and ourJob

So AbortController is not only for fetch, it’s a universal object to abort asynchronous tasks, and fetch has built-in integration with it.