Scala Language Futures Sequencing and traversing Futures
Example
In some cases it is necessary to calculate a variable amount of values on separate Futures. Assume to have a List[Future[Int]], but instead a List[Int] needs to be processed. Then the question is how to turn this instance of List[Future[Int]] into a Future[List[Int]]. For this purpose there is the sequence method on the Future companion object.
def listOfFuture: List[Future[Int]] = List(1,2,3).map(Future(_))
def futureOfList: Future[List[Int]] = Future.sequence(listOfFuture)
In general sequence is a commonly known operator within the world of functional programming that transforms F[G[T]] into G[F[T]] with restrictions to F and G.
There is an alternate operator called traverse, which works similar but takes a function as an extra argument. With the identity function x => x as a parameter it behaves like the sequence operator.
def listOfFuture: List[Future[Int]] = List(1,2,3).map(Future(_))
def futureOfList: Future[List[Int]] = Future.traverse(listOfFuture)(x => x)
However, the extra argument allows to modify each future instance inside the given listOfFuture. Furthermore, the first argument doesn't need to be a list of Future. Therefore it is possible to transform the example as follows:
def futureOfList: Future[List[Int]] = Future.traverse(List(1,2,3))(Future(_))
In this case the List(1,2,3) is directly passed as first argument and the identity function x => x is replaced with the function Future(_) to similarly wrap each Int value into a Future. An advantage of this is that the intermediary List[Future[Int]] can be omitted to improve performance.
