Unlock the Power of Web Workers in Your React Application
When a web page loads, it can become unresponsive until all resources are fully loaded. This can lead to a poor user experience, as users may not be able to interact with the page. However, web workers can help solve this problem by making your application more dynamic and loading faster.
What Are Web Workers?
A web worker is a JavaScript script that runs in the background, independent of other scripts. Since JavaScript is a single-threaded language, it cannot run multiple scripts simultaneously, which can be an issue for running large computation scripts. Web workers help load heavy computation scripts in the background without affecting the performance of the page.
Web Worker Syntax
The worker constructor accepts two parameters: the worker file name and the worker type. The worker type can be either classic or module. If the type is not specified, the default type will be classic. In this tutorial, we’ll use the module type because the reducer can only be used inside a component.
The Power of useReducer Hook
useReducer is an additional React Hook used to store and update states. It accepts three parameters: reducer, initial state, and an optional initial function. useReducer returns an array containing the current state value and a dispatch function to execute an action.
Building a Simple Counter Application
To demonstrate how to use web workers in a React application, let’s create a simple counter program that updates the state whenever the current state changes.
Creating the Worker.js File
First, we need to create a worker.js file inside the src folder. In this file, we’ll import initWorkerizedReducer from use-workerized-reducer and create a reducer function.
Adding the Web Worker
Next, we need to import useWorkerizedReducer from use-workerized-reducer/react, which gives us access to call the reducer function from the worker file. The useWorkerizedReducer function takes three parameters: current state, action, and initial state.
Running the Program
To start the application, enter the command npm start in the command line. This will run the application and demonstrate how web workers can improve the performance of your React application.
Take Your React Application to the Next Level
By using web workers and useWorkerizedReducer, you can create a more dynamic and responsive React application. With web workers, you can offload heavy computation scripts to the background, improving the overall user experience.