[webkit-dev] SharableScriptContext [was: GlobalScript in WebKit]

[Adam de Boor]

A worker context without the thread is close to what we're after, except for
the bit about how it doesn't do network stuff or timeouts. Fundamentally
what we need is, a place for centralizing network access and significant
amounts of application state, and sharing large amounts of code, that is
independent of any single window, and can manipulate the DOM of an arbitrary
number of application windows that are either created by code in this
independent context, or created by the user through navigation. We'd like to
be able to create this context from an extension, so if a user wishes to
have instant access to their gmail, or facebook, or whatever, they could
choose to install an extension that would create this context when the
browser starts.

Shared workers fundamentally don't do the trick because (a) most of the code
in the application has nothing to do with accessing the server, and
everything to do with presenting the UI, so shared workers don't help with
sharing the code among multiple windows, and (b) we want the UI to be
immediately responsive, which means not waiting for a worker thread to get
back to the UI thread with data, so we'd be caching the data both in the UI
context and in the worker thread context, in which case we might as well
just go to the server.

When using a named window, there are interesting race conditions (unless you
do something like the appcache suggestion to ensure the windows are in the
same process) when one is restoring the browser state on startup. The
significant challenge for the app developer is to deal with, when the named
window closes, in-flight non-idempotent XHRs and registered timeouts that
ought to be independent of any window, but that are tied to the named
window. Timeouts are easier to deal with (centralized timer manager that
remembers the deadline for each and reschedules in the context of the new
named window). Being able to reparent an XHR in flight would make handling
the transition easier....

a


On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 10:24 PM, Oliver Hunt <oliver at apple.com> wrote:

>
> On Nov 30, 2009, at 10:12 PM, Dmitry Titov wrote:
>
> At first look, this would solve same use cases as SharedScript. The
> difference is that it has to be passed to participating windows
> explicitly. Summing up, just for reference:
>
> var mySharedScriptContext = new SharedScriptContext("foo.js");
> mySharedScriptContext.onload = ...;
>
> later:
> var win = window.open(...);
> win.functionThatTakesSharedScriptContext(mySharedScriptContext);
>
> alternatively, later:
> var win = window.getWindowByName("foo"); // does not create a window if
> there is no "foo", searches in same process
> if (win)
>    win.functionThatTakesSharedScriptContext(mySharedScriptContext);
>
> and, possibly: add a list (regexp?) to App Cache manifest to describe the
> set of URLs loaded into the same process to make them able to find each
> other without relying on window.open().
>
> The idea behind SharedScriptContext+getWindowByName was that it would be
> possible to do (in your new window)
> if (sharedWin = getWindowByName("OriginWindow"))
>     sharedContext = sharedWin.sharedContext;
> else {
>    name = "OriginWindow";
>    sharedContext = new SharedScriptContext("foo.js");
> }
>
> At least that was my understanding.
>
> What is your application cache suggestion attempting to do?  The whole
> point of getWindowByName is that it doesn't need window.open
>
> All that said, Darin, Maciej and I were discussing this on IRC earlier and
> it would seem that simply adding getWindowByName (or some such) would gain a
> very large amount of the behaviour desired in the {Shared,
> Global}Script[Context] concept.
>
> --Oliver
>
>
> Dmitry
>
> On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 9:07 PM, Darin Fisher <darin at chromium.org> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 8:52 PM, Oliver Hunt <oliver at apple.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On Nov 30, 2009, at 8:31 PM, Darin Fisher wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 7:55 PM, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs at apple.com>wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Nov 30, 2009, at 6:16 PM, Drew Wilson wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Following up, I think this highlights the distinct set of use cases that
>>>> shared workers and shared script address:
>>>>
>>>> SharedWorkers are a great platform for when you have a single database
>>>> that is shared across multiple instances of your web app, and you want to
>>>> coordinate updates to that database. I can imagine sharing a single
>>>> connection to the server, etc via SharedWorkers.
>>>>
>>>> SharedScripts are a good platform for when you want to share data/code
>>>> (for example, the immense body of Javascript used to implement the Gmail UI)
>>>> across multiple windows. I can't speak to whether passing a hidden iframe
>>>> between windows as was suggested in the other thread would address this use
>>>> case sufficiently.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Would it be fair to say the goal for SharedScript is just to share code
>>>> and data (to reduce memory use of multiple instances of GMail), and not
>>>> network connections, timers, or other APIs based on async callbacks
>>>> (assuming those either remain per-Window or are in the SharedWorker)? If so,
>>>> then it would pretty much completely be handled by sharing of some arbitrary
>>>> JavaScript object, possibly arranged by SharedWorker.
>>>>
>>>> Sharing an out-of-document HTMLIFrameElement would almost even account
>>>> for timers and the like, except that currently in WebKit a frame's Window
>>>> does not exist and its contents are not loaded if the frame is not rendered.
>>>>
>>>
>>> XHRs also don't work after the frame has been unloaded.
>>>
>>>
>>> I think my primary concern is that the use of _Shared_ or _Global_ in the
>>> name implies behaviour similar to that of SharedWorker, which is not
>>> guaranteed, likewise origin based object lifetime can trivially result in
>>> differences in behaviour between browser (which when coupled with the naming
>>> issue) could easily become a headache for developers.
>>>
>>> It seems that what is really wanted is a Worker context that isn't
>>> actually a separate thread, so avoiding the need for postMessage, and have
>>> it be explicitly instantiated so as to avoid any browser-architecture
>>> derived behavioural differences. eg.
>>>
>>> var mySharedContext = new SharableScriptContext("script to load here?");
>>> mySharedContext.onload = function() {
>>>     doStuff();
>>> }
>>> // or should it be
>>> // mySharedContext.src = "script to load here?"
>>>
>>> Later on:
>>> function doSomethingCoolThatNeedsANewWindow() {
>>>     var win = window.open(...);
>>>     win.onload = function() {
>>>         win.functionThatTakesScriptContext(mySharedContext);
>>>     }
>>> }
>>>
>>> // Note handling the passing of the shared context is entirely developer
>>> defined -- eg. the only spec behaviour is the 'new SharableScriptContext'
>>> everything else is whatever the developers wants
>>> // Note 2: I am truly awful at naming things so these names are mostly
>>> chosen to clarify unambiguously-ish what i believe the goal is
>>>
>>> The downside is that it requires manually passing the context to new
>>> windows, the plus side is that it doesn't provide (or imply) behaviour that
>>> may be ('necessarily') different between UAs.
>>>
>>> --Oliver
>>>
>>>
>>
>> This seems pretty compelling to me.
>>
>> I think if we also had a function like window.getWindowByName(name), then
>> we could support the use case of a newly opened window connecting to an
>> existing window to get access to an existing SharableScriptContext.
>>
>> (To further support sharing from a newly opened window, perhaps it would
>> be interesting if application manifests could be leveraged to identify URLs
>> that should be loaded in the same browsing context.)
>>
>> -Darin
>>
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