Learning jQuery Deferreds

Appendix B. The Promises/A+ Specification

An open standard for sound, interoperable JavaScript promise—by implementers, for implementers.^[7]

A promise represents the eventual result of an asynchronous operation. The primary way of interacting with a promise is through its then method, which registers callbacks to receive either a promise’s eventual value or the reason why the promise cannot be fulfilled.

This specification details the behavior of the then method, providing an interoperable base which all Promises/A+ conformant promise implementations can be depended on to provide. As such, the specification should be considered very stable. Although the Promises/A+ organization may occasionally revise this specification with minor backward-compatible changes to address newly-discovered corner cases, we will integrate large or backward-incompatible only after careful consideration, discussion, and testing.

Historically, Promises/A+ clarifies the behavioral clauses of the earlier Promises/A proposal, extending it to cover de facto behaviors and omitting parts that are underspecified or problematic.

Finally, the core Promises/A+ specification does not deal with how to create, fulfill, or reject promises, choosing instead to focus on providing an interoperable then method. Future work in companion specifications may touch on these subjects.

Terminology

1. “promise” is an object or function with a then method whose behavior conforms to this specification.
2. “thenable” is an object ...