Intro to Callback in JavaScript

Foundation of callback function and use cases in JavaScript

illustration by the author

During my journey of learning JavaScript and a few days in with React, I had to come to terms with callback functions. It was impossible to avoid its existence and blindly using it without understanding. To understand callback function we have to know a bit about functions. Here I want to talk about function expression, arrow function, and callback function.

What is a Callback function?

According to MDN doc:

A callback function is a function passed into another function as an argument, which is then invoked inside the outer function to complete some kind of routine or action.

In JavaScript, functions are objects, which means, like any other objects it can be assigned to a variable and passed as an argument to another function. In a nutshell, a callback function is a function that is provided as a parameter for other methods such as forEach method or addEventListener method and gets invoked at a certain point in time.

Passing functions as arguments

So how do we do this? Let’s see with an example below:

document.addEventListener(‘click’,whoAmI);
//whoAmI Function Declaration(Function…