brandon-pereira / purrvice-workers

A web application for getting random cat pictures. Powered by service workers. Was built as a tech-talk for Critical Mass. See keynote file for presentation notes.

Purrvice Workers

A micro-webapp that uses service workers to preload and cache pictures of cats. Works offline. Also uses push notifications (if available) to re-engage the user.

Running

Running the front end:

npm install
npm start

Running the server:

npm run server

Gotchas

Here's a list of gotchas I received while developing this. Hopefully these help save you some time while developing.

• Service Worker is isolated to current folder structure (i.e. http://localhost:8080/ will not communicate with http://localhost:8080/webpack-dev-server)
• Service Workers can't easily be transpiled, however it is possible. Thankfully, most browsers Service Workers also support the main ES6 features you'd want to use.
• Service Workers can't connect directly to the webpage until they've registered and the user has refreshed. I have found a solution but it involves a lot of gross code to force claim the tabs. Hopefully this is simplified down the road.
• Service Worker Push Notifications require a server. No server-less code.
• Service Workers can only access your data through IndexedDB. No LocalStorage or likewise.