My Journey in Open Source - worker-spawner

What is this?

A Worker Thread spawner for Node.js with a simple API.

How do I install it?

npm install worker-spawner

How can I use it?

You can find a simple example in the examples folder.

Basic usage

My script:

const { workerThreadExecute } = require('worker-spawner');

const myExpensiveFunction = await workerThreadExecute(__dirname + '/blocking-expensive-function.js', myInput);
console.log(myExpensiveFunction);

My worker:

const { parentPort, workerData } = require('worker_threads');
// Do some expensive stuff
myOutput = workerData.map((item) => item * 2);
parentPort.postMessage(myOutput);

Advanced usage - Preloading

My script:

const { Worker } = require('worker_threads');
const { workerThreadExecute } = require('worker-spawner');
const preloadedWorker = new Worker(__dirname + '/blocking-expensive-function.js');

const myExpensiveFunction = await workerThreadExecute(preloadedWorker, myInput);
console.log(myExpensiveFunction);

My worker:

const { parentPort } = require('worker_threads');
parentPort.on('message', (input) => {
  // Do some expensive stuff
  myOutput = input.map((item) => item * 2);
  parentPort.postMessage(myOutput);
});

API

The workerThreadExecute function takes two arguments:

workerPathOrInstance: Either a path to a worker file or a preloaded worker instance.
input: The input to be passed to the worker. Please be aware the input will work differently depending on the type of the worker.
- If the worker is a preloaded worker, the input will be passed to the worker as a message.
- If the worker is a path to a worker file, the input will be passed to the worker as a parameter available using the workerData property of the worker_threads module.

Tests

You can run the tests by using the following command:

npm test

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