[whatwg] Using Web Workers without external files

Fri Sep 25 05:45:13 PDT 2009

On Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:40:41 +0200, Jonas Sicking <jonas at sicking.cc> wrote:

> You can also work around it by doing something like this:
>
> test.html:
> <!DOCTYPE html>
> <html>
> <head><title>example</title>
> <script>
> str = "<script to evaluate>";
> w = new Worker("externalStub.js");
> w.postMessage(str);
> </script>
> </html>
>
> externalStub.js:
> onmessage = function(e) { eval(e.data); }

Ah, yep. Still requires an external file, but it could be the same for  
different uses. Or it could be combined with my hack:

    <!--
    onmessage = function(e) { eval(e.data); }
    /*
    -->
    <!DOCTYPE html>
    <script>
    str = "...script to evaluate...";
    w = new Worker("");
    w.postMessage(str);
    </script>
    <!--
    */
    //-->

or even:

    <!--
    onmessage = function(e) { eval(e.data); }
    /*
    -->
    <!DOCTYPE html>
    <script type=text/x-worker id=worker>
    ...script to evaluate...
    </script>
    <script>
    str = document.getElementById('worker').text;
    w = new Worker("");
    w.postMessage(str);
    </script>
    <!--
    */
    //-->

> What's the use case?

As I said:

>> This would allow easier testing, mashups, small standalone apps, and so  
>> forth.

In particular, though, I suspect that people will work around this  
limitation by one of the means we've come up with so far, or maybe people  
with come up with even uglier workarounds. If we remove the limitation,  
people will have no reason to come up with ugly hacks but instead use the  
obvious supported way to do it, and it will be easier to debug and follow  
code.

> I think making data: urls is an ok solution,
> unless the usecases are compelling enough that we think it's something
> that people will do a lot.

Yeah, I think supporting data: URLs would be good.

-- 
Simon Pieters
Opera Software