pixelf3hler

i needed an object that behaves similar to a AS3 Dictionary:

One thing that sucks about javascript workers is that the data you give them is copied rather than shared. Browsers use the structured clone algorithm defined in the HTML5 specs to accomplish that.

As you probably know, that algorithm isn't capable of cloning Function objects, so it's pretty useless in some cases. But there's a simple workaround if you need to pass a function to a worker thread:

// the worker code: function parseFunction(fnstr) {    try{       var fn = Function(fnstr)    }catch(err) {       console.log("failed to build function from %s", fnstr)    }    return fn } self.onmessage = function(e) {    var fn = parseFunction(e.data)    fn() }

// the main thread: function serializeFunction(fn) {    var fnstr = fn.toString().replace(/^function[^\)]*\)[^\{]*\{|\}$/g, "")    return fnstr } function testFn() {    console.log("called testFn in another thread!") } worker.postMessage(serializeFunction(testFn))

If you're looking for a css extension that runs on the client-side without installing any additional software on the machine that runs your webserver, jss might be a solution.

javascript objects are always passed by reference, right? If you need a simple way to create a structured clone you can abuse a WebWorker to do your bidding:

(function(window, document, undefined) { window.URL = window.URL || window.webkitURL

var _worker, _codeBlob, _blobUrl, _workerCode = 'self.onmessage = function(e) { self.postMessage(e.data); }' function _createWorker() {    if(!_worker) {       _codeBlob = new Blob([_workerCode], { type: 'text/javascript' })       _blobUrl = window.URL.createObjectURL(_codeBlob)       _worker = new Worker(_blobUrl)    } } function copyAsync(obj, callback) {    _createWorker()    _worker.onmessage = function(e) {       this.terminate()       callback(e.data)    }    _worker.postMessage(obj) } window.copyAsync = copyAsync })(window, window.document)

the usage is more or less self-explanatory..just call it and pass the object you want to clone and a callback function like:

copyAsync(obj, function(clone) {

// do something...

})