Service Workers are like a JavaScript files , but they have access to set of features and also it’s run on a separate thread. It will not share the thread where the normal JavaScript code loaded by your html pages runs on. When you register a service worker through your html page or code initially , it will manage all the pages of a given scope. For example if your service worker is attached to the root of your application , then it’s applicable to all the html pages not only the single html page.
Service worker is also live on even after you closed all the pages in the browser .For example if you are using a mobile phone, even if you close the application , service worker will run as a background process.
What we can do with service workers?
Since it’s background process ,service workers can react all kind of incoming events from your JavaScript code as well as from your server as web push notification and can do something based on that , for example you can return a cached asset , show some notifications to the user and so on.
Type of events which service workers can listen to
fetch
By using fetch API you can initiate an http request asynchronously to get some resources across the network. This new API is similar to XmlHttpRequest , but provides a more powerful and flexible feature set
fetch('https://httpbin.org/get')
.then(function(response) {
return response.json();
})
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Fetch_API/Using_Fetch
What you can do with this fetch API in service worker?
By using service worker every http request send via fetch API can intercept like a network proxy.So you can block the request if you want and also you can manipulate the request.
self.addEventListener('fetch', function (event) {
event.respondWith(fetch(event.request));
});
Also the image tags which point to some image resource in the html will also send a fetch request by the browser. So you can cache the same by intercepting it.
Push Notifications
Every browser like Google Chrome,Mozilla Firefox has its own web push server , So you can push notifications from your web server to this web push server and then browser will send this notifications to your client. This feature is very useful for a mobile to receive push notifications even if we are not in the application.
https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/codelabs/push-notifications/
How to Register a service worker?
Please note one thing , the scope of the service worker depends on the location of the file. If the file is on your root of the application , service workers are applies to all pages in your application. If you can create the file in sub folder , service worker could only control the pages inside of this folder.
- Create a new file , you can give any name you want . Here I gave sw.js
- Add your service worker registration code , you can add this in to your start up js file.
if ('serviceWorker' in navigator) {
navigator.serviceWorker
.register('/sw.js')
.then(function () {
console.log('Service worker registered!');
})
.catch(function(err) {
console.log(err);
});
}
That’s it .
Mad Programmer 