Javascript: how to write a function that will execute asynchronously?
I have a few lines of code that I want to run asynchronously in Javascript so that it doesn't slow down my main algorithm. See this pseudo code:
//main algorithm with critical code that should run as soon as possible
...
...
runInParallel(function(){
//time consuming unimportant code to shows some progress feedback to user
...
}
//the rest of the time critical algorithm
...
...
runInParallel(function(){
//time consuming unimportant code to shows some progress feedback to user
...
}
//and so on and so forth
I've searched Stackoverflow for writing asynchronous code in Javascript, but the following questions are not like mine:
- how to run javascript function asynchronously without using setTimeout? : this is about the server side
- Loading javascript asynchronously - how to do callbacks? : it's about downloading the source
I guess I can use timers for this purpose. All I want is the body of the runInParallel () function, which efficiently executes the code in parallel with my main algorithm at a lower priority, if possible. Anyone?
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Javascript has no synchronization / flow control. If you want to execute something asynchronously, you can use it setTimeout
in conjunction with a callback to be notified when the function has completed.
var asyncHandle = setTimeout(function () { asyncCode(); callback(); }, 10);
asyncHandle
can be used to cancel a timeout before calling a function.
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If you are targeting HTML5 browsers, go for HTML5 web workers .
You can also try this interesting but rather old JavaScript compiler that allows you to use a language extension for this purpose.
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