You need to use Promises for this. They are available in ES6 but can be polyfilled quite easily:
function x() {
var promise = new Promise(function(resolve, reject) {
window.setTimeout(function() {
resolve('done!');
});
});
return promise;
}
x().then(function(done) {
console.log(done); // --> 'done!'
});
With async/await in ES2017 it becomes nicer if inside an async function:
async function() {
const result = await x();
console.log(result); // --> 'done!';
}