Titanium Worker Module (EXPERIMENTAL)

This is a Titanium module that provides a Web Worker like interface to applications built with Titanium.

This module is designed to be used when applications need to process asynchronous application logic. Due to the limitations of Javascript engines; tasks will not be executed on a seperate thread, but instead executed asynchronously.

Example

The following is a trivial echo background service. In your app.js, use the following:

var worker = require('ti.worker');

// create a worker thread instance
var task = worker.createWorker('echo.js');

// subscribe to any worker thread instance messages
task.addEventListener('message',function(event){
	
	// data that is sent will be in the data property
	alert(event.data);
	
	// stop terminating this thread instance
	task.terminate();
});

// send data to the worker thread which will be posted on the threads event queue
// you can send any data here
task.postMessage({
	msg:'Hello'
});

Now, in a separate file named echo.js, use the following:

// subscribe to events send with postMessage
worker.addEventListener('message',function(event){
	
	// send data back to any subscribers
	// pull data from the event from the data property
	worker.postMessage(event.data.msg);
});

Note: the worker global variable is always defined inside the worker execution context.

API

• postMessage - send a message to or from the worker thread. Send any data as the first argument.
• terminate - terminate the worker thread and stop as soon as possible processing.
• nextTick - this method is only available inside the worker instance and provides an ability to process the function passed on the next available thread event loop cycle.

Events

• message - receive an event. The data property of the event will contain as-is any data specified as the first argument.
• terminated - the worker thread was terminated.

Properties

The worker instance has only one property:

• url - the url of the worker thread JS file passed in during creation.

Warning

This module is experimental and has not been finalized.

License

Copyright (c) 2012-present by Axway Appcelerator. All Rights Reserved. This code is licensed under the terms of the Apache Public License, version 2.