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Finding broken promises in asynchronous JavaScript programs

Authors:

Saba Alimadadi,

Frank TipAuthors Info & Claims

Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages, Volume 2, Issue OOPSLA

Article No.: 162, Pages 1 - 26

https://doi.org/10.1145/3276532

Published: 24 October 2018 Publication History

Abstract

Recently, promises were added to ECMAScript 6, the JavaScript standard, in order to provide better support for the asynchrony that arises in user interfaces, network communication, and non-blocking I/O. Using promises, programmers can avoid common pitfalls of event-driven programming such as event races and the deeply nested counterintuitive control ow referred to as “callback hell”. Unfortunately, promises have complex semantics and the intricate control– and data- ow present in promise-based code hinders program comprehension and can easily lead to bugs. The promise graph was proposed as a graphical aid for understanding and debugging promise-based code. However, it did not cover all promise-related features in ECMAScript 6, and did not present or evaluate any technique for constructing the promise graphs. In this paper, we extend the notion of promise graphs to include all promise-related features in ECMAScript 6, including default reactions, exceptions, and the synchronization operations race and all. Furthermore, we report on the construction and evaluation of PromiseKeeper, which performs a dynamic analysis to create promise graphs and infer common promise anti-patterns. We evaluate PromiseKeeper by applying it to 12 open source promise-based Node.js applications. Our results suggest that the promise graphs constructed by PromiseKeeper can provide developers with valuable information about occurrences of common anti-patterns in their promise-based code, and that promise graphs can be constructed with acceptable run-time overhead.

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Cited By

Ganji MAlimadadi STip FChandra SBlincoe KTonella P(2023)Code Coverage Criteria for Asynchronous ProgramsProceedings of the 31st ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3611643.3616292(1307-1319)Online publication date: 30-Nov-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3611643.3616292
Wang WLin XWang JGao WGu DLv WWang JMeng WJensen CCremers CKirda E(2023)HODOR: Shrinking Attack Surface on Node.js via System Call LimitationProceedings of the 2023 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security10.1145/3576915.3616609(2800-2814)Online publication date: 15-Nov-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3576915.3616609
Arteca ESchafer MTip F(2023)Learning How to Listen: Automatically Finding Bug Patterns in Event-Driven JavaScript APIsIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2022.314797549:1(166-184)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2022.3147975
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Finding broken promises in asynchronous JavaScript programs
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software verification and validation
      1. Software defect analysis
        Software testing and debugging
  2. Software notations and tools
    1. General programming languages
      1. Language features
        Concurrent programming structures

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Published In

cover image Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages

Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages Volume 2, Issue OOPSLA

November 2018

1656 pages

EISSN:2475-1421

DOI:10.1145/3288538

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Copyright © 2018 Owner/Author.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 24 October 2018

Published in PACMPL Volume 2, Issue OOPSLA

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Cited By

Ganji MAlimadadi STip FChandra SBlincoe KTonella P(2023)Code Coverage Criteria for Asynchronous ProgramsProceedings of the 31st ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3611643.3616292(1307-1319)Online publication date: 30-Nov-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3611643.3616292
Wang WLin XWang JGao WGu DLv WWang JMeng WJensen CCremers CKirda E(2023)HODOR: Shrinking Attack Surface on Node.js via System Call LimitationProceedings of the 2023 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security10.1145/3576915.3616609(2800-2814)Online publication date: 15-Nov-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3576915.3616609
Arteca ESchafer MTip F(2023)Learning How to Listen: Automatically Finding Bug Patterns in Event-Driven JavaScript APIsIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2022.314797549:1(166-184)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2022.3147975
Seifert DWan MHsu JYeh BHarman MMiller H(2022)An asynchronous call graph for JavaScriptProceedings of the 44th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice10.1145/3510457.3513059(29-30)Online publication date: 21-May-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3510457.3513059
Arteca EHarner SPradel MTip FDwyer MDamian DZeller A(2022)NessieProceedings of the 44th International Conference on Software Engineering10.1145/3510003.3510106(1494-1505)Online publication date: 21-May-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3510003.3510106
Turcotte AShah MAldrich MTip FDwyer MDamian DZeller A(2022)DrAsyncProceedings of the 44th International Conference on Software Engineering10.1145/3510003.3510097(774-785)Online publication date: 21-May-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3510003.3510097
Seifert DWan MHsu JYeh B(2022)An Asynchronous Call Graph for JavaScript2022 IEEE/ACM 44th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice (ICSE-SEIP)10.1109/ICSE-SEIP55303.2022.9794057(29-30)Online publication date: May-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSE-SEIP55303.2022.9794057
Torres Lopez CVan Verre LGonzalez Boix ECastegren EDe Koster JFowler S(2021)What’s the problem? interrogating actors to identify the root cause of concurrency bugsProceedings of the 11th ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Programming Based on Actors, Agents, and Decentralized Control10.1145/3486601.3486709(24-36)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3486601.3486709
Sun HRosa ABonetta DBinder W(2021)Automatically Assessing and Extending Code Coverage for NPM Packages2021 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automation of Software Test (AST)10.1109/AST52587.2021.00013(40-49)Online publication date: May-2021
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Zhang YSalvaneschi GMyers A(2020)Handling bidirectional control flowProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/34282074:OOPSLA(1-30)Online publication date: 13-Nov-2020
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