HTML5/JS - Start several webworkers

Question

I\'m currently writing on a program, where I have to deal with huge arrays. I can however split those arrays. My plan now is, to process the arrays in different web workers.

Answer 1

stiller_leser. If you still work on the problem, take a look at the ng-vkthread plugin. It allows you to implement parallel computing technique, which you're trying to develop in your project. With this plugin you can execute multiple functions in multiple threads simultaneously.

Function can be defined directly in the main thread or called from an external javascript file.

Function can be:

• Regular functions
• Object's methods
• Functions with dependencies
• Functions with context
• Anonymous functions

Basic usage:

/* function to execute in a thread */
function foo(str) {
    return str.toUpper();
}

function bar(str) {
    return str.toUpper();
}

// to execute these 2 functions in 2 threads: //

/* create objects, which you pass to vkThread as an argument*/
var param1 = {
      fn: foo,
      args: ['hello']
  };
var param2 = {
      fn: bar,
      args: ['world']
  }

/* run thread */
vkThread.execAll([param1,param2]).then(
  function (data) {
    $scope.repos = data[0] + ' ' + data[1]; // <-- HELLO WORLD
  }
);

Examples and API doc: http://www.eslinstructor.net/ng-vkthread/demo/

Hope this helps,

--Vadim

Answer 2

1. How would I run several web workers? I tried a for-loop looking like that:

There's no problem with creating more than one worker, even if you don't keep track of them in an array. See below.

2. How would I control that all have finished their work? (I need to reassembly the array and work with it later)

They can post a message back to you when they're done, with the results. Example below.

3. How many web workers really bring an improvement?

How long is a piece of string? :-) The answer will depend entirely on the target machine on which this is running. A lot of people these days have four or more cores on their machines. Of course, the machine is doing a lot of other things as well. You'll have to tune for your target environment.

4. Is there any advanced tutorial, besides the MDN-entry?

There isn't a lot "advanced" about web workers. :-) I found this article was sufficient.

Here's an example running five workers and watching for them to be done:

Main window:

(function() {
    var n, worker, running;

    display("Starting workers...");
    running = 0;
    for (n = 0; n < 5; ++n) {
        workers = new Worker("worker.js");
        workers.onmessage = workerDone;
        workers.postMessage({id: n, count: 10000});
        ++running;
    }
    function workerDone(e) {
        --running;
        display("Worker " + e.data.id + " is done, result: " + e.data.sum);
        if (running === 0) { // <== There is no race condition here, see below
            display("All workers complete");
        }
    }
    function display(msg) {
        var p = document.createElement('p');
        p.innerHTML = String(msg);
        document.body.appendChild(p);
    }
})();

worker.js:

this.onmessage = function(e) {
    var sum, n;
    sum = 0;
    for (n = 0; n < e.data.count; ++n) {
        sum += n;
    }
    this.postMessage({id: e.data.id, sum: sum});
};

About the race condition that doesn't exist: If you think in terms of true pre-emptive threading, then you might think: I could create a worker, increment running to 1, and then before I create the next worker I could get the message from the first one that it's done, decrement running to 0, and mistakenly think all the workers were done.

That can't happen in the environment web workers work in. Although the environment is welcome to start the worker as soon as it likes, and a worker could well finish before the code starting the workers finished, all that would do is queue a call to the workerDone function for the main JavaScript thread. There is no pre-empting. And so we know that all workers have been started before the first call to workerDone is actually executed. Thus, when running is 0, we know they're all finished.

Final note: In the above, I'm using onmessage = ... to hook up event handlers. Naturally that means I can only have one event handler on the object I'm doing that with. If you need to have multiple handlers for the message event, use addEventListener. All browsers that support web workers support addEventListener on them (youdon't have to worry about the IE attachEvent thing).