Wednesday, July 24, 2013

vkThread - execute any js function in a thread.

vkThread is a javascript plugin, which allows you to execute any function of a your code in a thread.

Standalone function: simply pass it as an argument to the vkthread(), and get the result in a callback function. You don't need to create a separate file for each thread, like you normally do with a regular worker.

Object's method: vkthread accepts context as an optional parameter and executes function in its context. Simply pass the object as a context, that's it.

Function with dependencies: vkthread accepts a list of filenames as an optional argument and imports these files in the thread before the function is calling.

Here is a basic example:


function sum(num1, num2) {
    return num1 + num2;
}

/* execute function foo() in the main thread. */
var foo = sum(2,3);

/* open a new thread and execute function foo() in this thread. */
vkthread.exec(sum, [2,3], function(data){ var foo = data; });



vkThread is based on HTML5 "Worker" technology. It also incorporates JSONfn code to implement key tasks. In spite of technical complexity, plugin is super compact. Development version (plain text with comments) is less than 2k. I don't care to minify it.

For examples and documentation see http://www.eslinstructor.net/vkthread/