Shortest route to solve undefined from Async/Await

Question

I'm trying to protect my API key using a Netlify function (a modified return-env.js) that grabs and outputs an environment variable. Since my project is in vanilla JS, I then have to grab the key from the function in order to use it. But this is where it gets difficult.

Currently I have:

function getKey() {
  (async ()=> {
    const response = await fetch('/.netlify/functions/return-env')
    const resObj = await response.json()  
    console.log(resObj);
    return resObj;
  })();
}
console.log("my key " + getKey())

const Airtable = require('airtable');
const base = new Airtable({apiKey: 'EXAMPLE-API-KEY'})

getKey() always returns undefined, as would resObj if logged outside the function. What's missing here?

Answer 1

getKey will return undefined because you are not returning anything in the function call

function getKey() {
  return (async ()=> {
    ...
  })();
}

It will now return a promise which you can then chain or await, awaiting would require it to be in an asynchronous function.

if you just wanted to .then() off it:

getKey().then((key) => {
  // do something with the key object
}