[whatwg] LocalStorage in workers

Wed Sep 16 11:34:11 PDT 2009

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 11:24 AM, James Robinson <jamesr at google.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 10:53 AM, Michael Nordman <michaeln at google.com>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 9:58 AM, Drew Wilson <atwilson at google.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Jeremy, what's the use case here - do developers want workers to have
>>> access to shared local storage with pages? Or do they just want workers to
>>> have access to their own non-shared local storage?
>>> Because we could just give workers their own separate WorkerLocalStorage
>>> and let them have at it. A worker could block all the other accesses to
>>> WorkerLocalStorage within that domain, but so be it - it wouldn't affect
>>> page access, and we already had that issue with the (now removed?)
>>> synchronous SQL API.
>>>
>>> I think a much better case can be made for WorkerLocalStorage than for
>>> "give workers access to page LocalStorage", and the design issues are much
>>> simpler.
>>>
>>
>> Putting workers in their own storage silo doesn't really make much sense?
>> Sure it may be simpler for browser vendors, but does that make life simpler
>>  for app developers, or just have them scratching their heads about how to
>> read/write the same data set from either flavor of context in their
>> application?
>>
>> I see no rhyme or reason for the arbitrary barrier except for browser
>> vendors to work around the awkward implict locks on LocalStorage (the source
>> of much grief). Consider this... would it make sense to cordon off the
>> databases workers vs pages can see? I would think not, and i would hope
>> others agree.
>>
>
> The difference is that the database interface is purely asynchronous
> whereas storage is synchronous.
>

Sure... we're talking about adding an async api that allows worker to access
a local storage repository... should such a thing exist, why should it not
provide access to the same repository as seen by pages?

> If multiple threads have synchronous access to the same shared resource
> then there has to be a consistency model.  ECMAScript does not provide for
> one so it has to be done at a higher level.  Since there was not a solution
> in the first versions that shipped, the awkward implicit locks you mention
> were suggested as a workaround.  However it's far from clear that these
> solve the problem and are implementable.  It seems like the only logical
> continuation of this path would be to add explicit, blocking synchronization
> primitives for developers to deal with - which I think everyone agrees would
> be a terrible idea.  If you're worried about developers scratching their
> heads about how to pass data between workers just think about happens-before
> relationships and multi-threaded memory models.
>
> In a hypothetical world without synchronous access to LocalStorage/cookies
> from workers, there is no shared memory between threads except via message
> passing.  This can seem a bit tricky for developers but is very easy to
> reason about and prove correctness and the absence of deadlocks.
>
> - James
>
>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> -atw
>>>
>>> On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 8:27 PM, Jonas Sicking <jonas at sicking.cc> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 6:56 PM, Jeremy Orlow <jorlow at chromium.org>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> > One possible solution is to add an asynchronous callback interface for
>>>> > LocalStorage into workers.  For example:
>>>> > function myCallback(localStorage) {
>>>> >   localStorage.accountBalance = localStorage.accountBalance + 100;
>>>> > }
>>>> > executeLocalStorageCallback(myCallback);  // TODO: Make this name
>>>> better
>>>> >  :-)
>>>> > The interface is simple.  You can only access localStorage via a
>>>> callback.
>>>> >  Any use outside of the callback is illegal and would raise an
>>>> exception.
>>>> >  The callback would acquire the storage mutex during execution, but
>>>> the
>>>> > worker's execution would not block during this time.  Of course, it's
>>>> still
>>>> > possible for a poorly behaving worker to do large amounts
>>>> of computation in
>>>> > the callback, but hopefully the fact they're executing in a callback
>>>> makes
>>>> > the developer more aware of the problem.
>>>>
>>>> First off, I agree that not having localStorage in workers is a big
>>>> problem that we need to address.
>>>>
>>>> If I were designing the localStorage interface today I would use the
>>>> above interface that you suggest. Grabbing localStorage can only be
>>>> done asynchronously, and while you're using it, no one else can get a
>>>> reference to it. This way there are no race conditions, but also no
>>>> way for anyone to have to lock.
>>>>
>>>> So one solution is to do that in parallel to the current localStorage
>>>> interface. Let's say we introduce a 'clientStorage' object. You can
>>>> only get a reference to it using a 'getClientStorage' function. This
>>>> function is available both to workers and windows. The storage is
>>>> separate from localStorage so no need to worry about the 'storage
>>>> mutex'.
>>>>
>>>> There is of course a risk that a worker grabs on to the clientStorage
>>>> and holds it indefinitely. This would result in the main window (or
>>>> another worker) never getting a reference to it. However it doesn't
>>>> affect responsiveness of that window, it's just that the callback will
>>>> never happen. While that's not ideal, it seems like a smaller problem
>>>> than any other solution that I can think of. And the WebDatabase
>>>> interfaces are suffering from the same problem if I understand things
>>>> correctly.
>>>>
>>>> There's a couple of other interesting things we could expose on top of
>>>> this:
>>>>
>>>> First, a synchronous API for workers. We could allow workers to
>>>> synchronously get a reference to clientStorage. If someone is
>>>> currently using clientStorage then the worker blocks until the storage
>>>> becomes available. We could either use a callback as the above, which
>>>> blocks until the clientStorage is acquired and only holds the storage
>>>> until the callback exists. Or we could expose clientStorage as a
>>>> property which holds the storage until control is returned to the
>>>> worker eventloop, or until some explicit release API is called. The
>>>> latter would be how localStorage is now defined, with the important
>>>> difference that localStorage exposes the synchronous API to windows.
>>>>
>>>> Second, allow several named storage areas. We could add an API like
>>>> getNamedClientStorage(name, callback). This would allow two different
>>>> workers to simultaneously store things in a storage areas, as long as
>>>> they don't need to use the *same* storage area. It would also allow a
>>>> worker and the main window to simultaneously use separate storage
>>>> areas.
>>>>
>>>> However we need to be careful if we add both above features. We can't
>>>> allow a worker to grab multiple storage areas at the same time since
>>>> that could cause deadlocks. However with proper APIs I believe we can
>>>> avoid that.
>>>>
>>>> / Jonas
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
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