electron-background-processing

Update Oct 2021: Now using context isolation for renderer and background threads, see Enable Context Isolation... and Context Isolation.

Demo of background processing using Electron

• Pool of background threads to match processors using hidden BrowserWindow instances
• Using IPC to communicate between main, renderer and background threads, see electron ipcMain
• Asynchronous message passing (synchronous is possible too but not used here)

Install and Run

Install NodeJS.

# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/sgdan/electron-background-processing.git
cd electron-background-processing

# Installs Electron 1.8.8 (as specified in package.json)
npm install

# Runs "electron ." (main.js is specified in package.json)
npm start

After starting up on the command line you should see the number of cpus e.g.

$ electron .

cpus: 4

Use the Send to main thread button and you should see a message from the UI printed on the command line.

The Send to bg thread button triggers a message from the UI to the main thread which passes it to one of the background threads. That background thread should respond back to the main thread which passes it to the UI. You should see the response immediately next to the button if a background thread was available.

You can also Do background work. If you click it multiple times you should see your computer CPU rise to 100% usage. However, the UI should remain responsive. Further actions will be queued until they can be handled.