Decorate $q with $q.spread()

[jniles]

This is a request for a polyfill/decorator that will allow me to write much cleaner client-side code. Angular's $q service provides a tiny API. I've found myself writing the following code several times:

Service.detail(id)
.then(function (entitiy) {
  return [
   ServiceA.detail(entity.idA),
   ServiceB.detail(entity.idB),
   ServiceC.list(),
   ServiceD.methodX()
}).then(function (promises) {
  var entityA = promises[0];
  var entityB = promises[1];
  var entityC = promises[2];
  var entityD = promises[3];

  // logic!
})
.catch(handler);

This code is obtuse and hard to read. If we decorated $q with $q.spread() I could write:

Service.detail(id)
.then(function (entitiy) {
  return [
   ServiceA.detail(entity.idA),
   ServiceB.detail(entity.idB),
   ServiceC.list(),
   ServiceD.methodX()
}).spread(function (entityA, entityB, entityC, entityD) {

  // logic!
})
.catch(handler);

which is certainly much prettier. Adding methods to AngularJS services is easy with Angular.decorator.

[jniles]

There hasn't been a strong enough need for this yet. Closing it until that need is presented.