Transform web workers into browserified inline Blobs with browserify.

Your entry point main.js:

var mod = require('module')
var worker = new Worker('worker.js')

Your worker entry point worker.js:

self.onmessage = function(e) {
  var ab = new Uint8Array(10)
  for (var n = 0; n < ab.length; n++) ab[n] = 1
  self.postMessage(ab.buffer, [ab.buffer])
}

Browserify with this workerify transform:

browserify -t workerify main.js > bundle.js

and your bundle.js will look like:

var mod = require('module')
var worker = new Worker(window.URL.createObjectURL(new Blob(['BROWSERIFIED CONTENTS OF worker.js'])));

The main reason for this is modular workers.

Let's say you create a module that would like to use web workers. Users would need to configure the URL to the worker. When your module becomes a dependency of a dependency and so on, the setup becomes really cumbersome. Especially when your worker needs to be browserified.

With this transform you simply npm install workerify --save and configure your module's package.json to apply the transform:

{
  "name": "mymodule",
  "browserify": {
    "transform": "workerify"
  }
}

Now when end users browserify your module, anywhere in the dependency tree, it will browserify and inline the worker. No URLs, no extra build steps and no additional end user requirements.

This is a work in progress. Currently it will only transform new Worker('string'). But it should also detect if a worker is variable identifier so it can be used with libs like workerstream.

With npm do:

npm install workerify

• 0.1.0 - initial release

Copyright (c) 2013 Kyle Robinson Young
Licensed under the MIT license.