lightningspirit / gatsby-plugin-workerize-loader

Integrate web workers into your GatsbyJS app.

gatsby-plugin-workerize-loader

A Gatsby plugin to integrate web workers into your GatsbyJS app via workerize-loader.

Install

With Yarn:

yarn add gatsby-plugin-workerize-loader -D

Or with npm:

npm install --save-dev gatsby-plugin-workerize-loader

Usage

Add plugin to gatsby-config.js

plugins: ['gatsby-plugin-workerize-loader']

Create a worker file with suffix .worker.js e.g. search.worker.js.

// search.worker.js
export async function search(searchInput) {
  // expensive search procedure...

  return searchResults
}

Import and instantiate the web worker in your source file. One caveat is web worker only works in browser environment.

// searchWorker.js
import SearchWorker from 'path/to/search.worker.js'

const searchWorker = typeof window === 'object' && new SearchWorker()

export default searchWorker

Use it in your component

// SearchComponent.js
import searchWorker from "path/to/seachWorker.js";

function SearchComponent() {
  useEffect(() => {
    searchWorker.search(searchInput).then(
      searchResults => // do something with search results
    );
  }, [searchInput]);
}

Recipes

Lazy initialization

Worker code is only downloaded and parsed when you first instantiate Worker i.e. new Worker(). Automatic code-splitting 🔥🔥🔥.

With useRef within a component.

// SearchComponent.js
import SearchWorker from "path/to/search.worker.js";

function SearchComponent() {
  const searchWorkerRef = useRef(null);

  function getSearchWorker() {
    if (!searchWorkerRef.current) {
      searchWorkerRef.current = new SearchWorker();
    }
    return searchWorkerRef.current;
  }

  useEffect(() => {
    getSearchWorker().search(searchInput).then(
      searchResults => // do something with search results
    );
  }, [searchInput]);
}

Or anywhere in your app.

// getSearchWorker.js
import SearchWorker from 'path/to/search.worker.js'

let searchWorker

export default function getSearchWorker() {
  if (!searchWorker) {
    searchWorker = new SearchWorker()
  }
  return searchWorker
}

// anywhere.js
import getSearchWorker from "path/to/getSearchWorker.js";

function someOperation (searchInput) {
  getSearchWorker().search(searchInput).then(
    searchResults => // do something with search results
  );

  // remaining steps
}

License

MIT