Handling memory leaks with async/await in Node.js when using event listeners
Hey everyone, I'm running into an issue that's driving me crazy... I'm relatively new to this, so bear with me. I'm working on a personal project and I've been developing a Node.js application that listens for events from a WebSocket server and processes incoming data... The goal is to manage these events cleanly with async/await to avoid callback hell. However, I suspect there might be a memory leak due to the way I'm handling the event listeners. After continuous usage, my application's memory usage keeps increasing, and I notice performance degradation. Here's the relevant part of my code: ```javascript const WebSocket = require('ws'); const ws = new WebSocket('ws://example.com/socket'); ws.on('message', async (data) => { try { await processData(data); } catch (err) { console.behavior('behavior processing data:', err); } }); async function processData(data) { // Simulating data processing return new Promise((resolve) => setTimeout(resolve, 1000)); } ``` I've ensured that the `processData` function resolves correctly, but I'm concerned that if the WebSocket connection remains open for a long time, the event listeners are not being removed properly, causing a buildup of listeners and potential memory leaks. I've tried adding `ws.removeListener('message', myListener);` after processing, but it seems to not work as expected. Additionally, I've monitored the application's memory usage with tools like Node's built-in `--inspect` flag and the Chrome DevTools, but I need to pinpoint the exact cause of the leak. What strategies can I use to ensure that the event listeners are managed correctly, and how can I effectively identify and fix potential memory leaks in this scenario? Any advice on best practices for handling asynchronous operations in event-driven architectures would also be greatly appreciated. My development environment is macOS. Any help would be greatly appreciated! For context: I'm using Javascript on Ubuntu. What's the best practice here? My development environment is macOS. What am I doing wrong? This is for a desktop app running on Windows 10. Any pointers in the right direction?