✨ Await a promise without try/catch

As widespread and valuable as await is in Javascript, I really cannot stand wrapping it in a try/catch.

Most of the time I use a catch block, I want to prevent the function from blocking the flow and instead gracefully recover by returning some default value. Or maybe the operation is not business-critical, and it can fail silently.
In these cases, a try/catch is overly verbose and can make the code harder to parse or make some patterns look awkward (like having to declare a variable outside of the block to use it outside of it).

let posts = [];
try {
  posts = await getAllPosts();
} catch (error) {
  log(error);
}

if (!posts.length) {
  return [];
}

// continue with the code

We can leverage the fact that every awaitable function is essentially a promise and use Promise.prototype.catch to clean up our code and make it simpler.

const posts = await getAllPosts().catch((error) => {
  log(error);

  return [];
});

if (!posts.length) {
  return [];
}

// continue with the code

This pattern looks even nicer when the use-case is awaiting a function that is not critical:

await promise.catch(() => null);

// instead of

try {
  await promise;
} catch (_) {
  // do nothing
}

I also use this technique when i want to further process data in the same context:

const post = await getSinglePost().then(post => withAbstract(post));

// instead of
const post = await getSinglePost();
const postWithAbstract = withAbstract(post));

// or
const post = withAbstract(await getSinglePost()); // this feels dirty