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tj
co
JavaScript2013–2024
tj / co

co

The ultimate generator based flow-control goodness for nodejs (supports thunks, promises, etc)

33Distinct people
37Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
11.8KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

The ultimate generator based flow-control goodness for nodejs (supports thunks, promises, etc)

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 12:03:30 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year37 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2013-06-06 15:14:50 UTC to 2024-01-05 18:56:36 UTC.

0510152013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 2 submissions, 5 comments20132014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 14 mentions; 0 submissions, 14 comments2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 8 mentions; 0 submissions, 8 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments20182019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2024

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20132013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC725
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC14014
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC808
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
co Generator based control flow goodness for nodejs and the browser, using promises, letting you write non-blocking code in a nice-ish way. Co v4 co@4.0.0 has been released, which now relies on promises. It is a stepping stone towards the async/await proposal. The primary API change is how co() is invoked. Before, co returned a "thunk", which you then called with a callback and optional arguments. Now, co() returns a promise. co(function* () { var result = yield Promise.resolve(true); return result; }).then(function (value) { console.log(value); }, function (err) { console.error(err.stack); }); If you want to convert a co-generator-function into a regular function that returns a promise, you now use co.wrap(fn*). var fn = co.wrap(function* (val) { return yield Promise.resolve(val); }); fn(true).then(function (val) { }); Platform Compatibility co@4+ requires a Promise implementation. For versions of node < 0.11 and for many older browsers, you should/must include your own Promise polyfill. When using node 0.10.x and lower or browsers without generator support, you must use gnode and/or regenerator. When using node 0.11.x, you must use the --harmony-generators flag or just --harmony to get access to generators. Node v4+ is supported out of the box, you can use co without flags or polyfills. Installation $ npm install co Associated libraries Any library that returns promises work well with co. mz - wrap all of node's code libraries as promises. View the wiki for more libraries. Examples var co = require('co'); co(function *(){ // yield any promise var result = yield Promise.resolve(true); }).catch(onerror); co(function *(){ // resolve multiple promises in parallel var a = Promise.resolve(1); var b = Promise.resolve(2); var c = Promise.resolve(3); var res = yield [a, b, c]; console.log(res); // => [1, 2, 3] }).catch(onerror); // errors can be try/catched co(function *(){ try { yield Promise.reject(new Error('boom')); } catch (err) { console.error(err.message); // "boom" } }).catch(onerror); function onerror(err) { // log any uncaught errors // co will not throw any errors you do not handle!!! // HANDLE ALL YOUR ERRORS!!! console.error(err.stack); } Yieldables The yieldable objects currently supported are: promises thunks (functions) array (parallel execution) objects (parallel execution) generators (delegation) generator functions (delegation) Nested yieldable objects are supported, meaning you can nest promises within objects within arrays, and so on! Promises Read more on promises! Thunks Thunks are functions that only have a single argument, a callback. Thunk support only remains for backwards compatibility and may be removed in future versions of co. Arrays yielding an array will resolve all the yieldables in parallel. co(function* () { var res = yield [ Promise.resolve(1), Promise.resolve(2), Promise.resolve(3), ]; console.log(res); // => [1, 2, 3] }).catch(onerror); Objects Just like arrays, objects resolve all yieldables in parallel. co(function* () { var res = yield { 1: Promise.resolve(1), 2: Promise.resolve(2), }; console.log(res); // => { 1: 1, 2: 2 } }).catch(onerror); Generators and Generator Functions Any generator or generator function you can pass into co can be yielded as well. This should generally be avoided as we should be moving towards spec-compliant Promises instead. API co(fn*).then( val => ) Returns a promise that resolves a generator, generator function, or any function that returns a generator. co(function* () { return yield Promise.resolve(true); }).then(function (val) { console.log(val); }, function (err) { console.error(err.stack); }); var fn = co.wrap(fn*) Convert a generator into a regular function that returns a Promise. var fn = co.wrap(function* (val) { return yield Promise.resolve(val); }); fn(true).then(function (val) { }); License MIT
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

7 sources
Callback hell isn't, but promises do help (to a point) In 0.12, node will ship with a version of v8 which has generators (hidden under the --harmony flag), which are shallow coroutines, which allow for the same code style as go-routines. Existing non-blocking libraries will be reusable with generators via e.g. https://github.com/jmar777/suspend or https://github.com/visionmedia/co etc. Performance could also potentially improve as in V8 closures are much more expensive than generators.
In Explicit bootstrapping of pip in Python installations
I agree that the current state of Node.JS is not good, however there is potential for a brighter future. The language itself is improving (such as ECMAScript 6 including yield/generators which will allow things like this https://github.com/visionmedia/co ) which should reduce the callback hell situation. Besides popularity and momentum, the language and runtimes have solid engineering talent behind them (Google, IBM, Microsoft, and others are on the ECMAScript committee and there's several big corporation supported JS engines (V8, SpiderMonkey, Chakra, etc.))
In Why the Tech Industry Needs to Deal With Its Ageism Problem

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