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POHow to use jQuery to Parse XML from within a Web Worker Thread
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copied!<p><em><strong>Skimming? Just read what's bold.</em></strong></p> <p>Howdy friends! I'm building a <strong>web application</strong> that needs to do some serious XML crunching.</p> <p>I currently have a function that <strong>uses jQuery to parse and manipulate massive XML documents.</strong> This <strong>locks up the brower's UI for up to sixty seconds</strong>, which is obviously, quite lame.</p> <p>I've been looking into <a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/DOM/Using_web_workers" rel="nofollow"><em>Web Workers</em></a>, because <strong>I'd like to run this operation in a Web Worker thread to alleviate the browser's UI.</strong></p> <p>I was <strong>hoping I could use the Web Worker's <code>self.importScripts()</code> to import the jQuery library, to parse and manipulate XML from within the Web Worker thread.</strong> <br />   <strong>Cannot do:</strong> the <strong>Web Worker throws errors, like <code>window is not defined</code>,</strong> because the jQuery library makes references to window and friends, which aren't thread safe, and therefore aren't present in the Web Worker's global namespace.</p> <p>I've done a lot of Googling, but have had <strong>trouble finding any recent information on this subject.</strong> I've found some hacky work-arounds and jQuery plugins, but they are all several years old, and I've been hoping I've been missing a newer solution for this relatively new technology. <br />   <strong>Does a (semi-)official <em>"Web Worker jQuery"</em> exist?</strong></p> <p>I've found <a href="http://xmljs.sourceforge.net/index.html" rel="nofollow"><em>XMLforScript</em></a>, an alternative to jQuery that should run within a Web Worker -- but <strong>I'm specifically looking for a jQuery solution,</strong> because I don't want to rewrite my code.</p> <p>I was tempted to try to create a series of fake elements to ease jQuery's errors within the Web Worker, before calling <code>importScripts()</code>, like so:</p> <pre><code>window={ document:{ createElement:function(){ return { setAttribute:function(){} } } } }; /* ... much more fake DOM */ importScripts('jquery.js'); </code></pre> <p>But, I realize I'd have to go really deep into creating a gigantic artificial DOM to satisfy jQuery, and figure it's probably a road to failure and time-wasting, because jQuery probably relies on some of these objects for it's XML parsing (I don't know enough about how jQuery works to know).</p> <p><strong>Does anybody have any lovely solutions?</strong></p> <p>If not, I'll just make a fatty static loading indicator to warn the user that shenanigans take time, and that they have to trust and hope the web-app hasn't crashed or stopped working :D</p> <p>Thanks for your ponderings. <br />  //Chase.</p>

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