Ryder

A Remote Procedure Call & Subscription Utility via postMessage

The name

Ryder is of old English origin and means cavalrymen, messenger. And, Ryder is the main protagonist of the TV series PAW Patrol.

Features

Platform Agnostic

Ryder supports any message event sources that implements postMessage and message event. So window, MessagePort, node:worker_threads, WebWorker, ServiceWorker and BroadcastChannel are supported out of the box.

Other message event sources like WebSocket, WebRTC and Server-sent events could be supported with postMessage implemented by users.

Use Case

	Client	Server
An iframe executes functions, accesses or subscribes data in another iframe	window(of an iframe)	window(of another iframe)
A web page executes functions, accesses or subscribes data in WebWorker or ServiceWorker	window	WebWorker or ServiceWorker
A NodeJS module executes functions, accesses or subscribes data in node:worker_threads	node:worker_threads (parentPort)	node:worker_threads
A web page executes functions, accesses or subscribes data from another web server	WebSocket(with postMessage wrapper)	WebSocket (with postMessage wrapper, via ws package)
A web page executes functions, accesses or subscribes data from another peer (WebRTC, peer-to-peer communication)	RTCDataChannel (with postMessage wrapper)	RTCDataChannel (with postMessage wrapper)

Reference implementation of WebSocket postMessage wrapper

class RyderWebSocket extends WebSocket {
  postMessage(data) {
    return this.send(data);
  }
}

Robust Connection

Installation

# npm
npm install ryder

# yarn
yarn add ryder

# pnpm
pnpm add ryder

Usage

Server

async function fetchData(type: string) {
  await timeout(1000);
  return `Answer for ${type} is 42`;
}

const rpcMap = {
  fetchAnswer: fetchData,
  isLoading: false,
};

const subscriptionMap = {
  // Outputs 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 ... every 1000ms
  interval: intervalSubscription,
};

const { messageHandler } = createServerBridge({
  /**
   * Handler for client calling `subscribe` to subscribe a data source.
   * Multiple subscription request of the same property key will not have
   * duplicated subscription to the data source.
   */
  subscriptionHandler: (
    propertyPath: string[],
    onValueChange: (value: unknown) => void
  ) => {
    const unsubscribe = subscriptionMap(propertyPath[0]).subscribe(
      onValueChange
    );
    return unsubscribe;
  },
  /**
   * Handler for client calling `invoke` to execute a function, or get data.
   */
  invokeHandler: (propertyPath: PropertyKey[]) => rpcMap[propertyPath[0]],
});

Client

const bridge = createClientBridge({
  /**
   * The callback function to provide a Ryder Server to connect.
   */
  serverFinder,
  /**
   * Indicates if Ryder coalesces multiple requests into one if possible. coalesced requests reduce
   * the number of `postMessage` calls, and guarantee the execution order without `await` if no data access needed
   */
  requestCoalescing: true,
});

window.addEventListener('message', bridge.messageHandler);

// Function invocation, call remote `fetchData` with no parameters
const result = await bridge.invoke(
  ['fetchAnswer'],
  ['life the universe and everything']
); // Returns "Answer for life the universe and everything is 42"

// Variable access
const result = await bridge.invoke(['isLoading']); // Returns false

// Subscription
const unsubscribe = bridge.subscribe(['interval'], (value: number) => {
  console.log(value); // Prints 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 ... every 1000ms
});

Advanced Techniques

Usage of JavaScript Proxy

Request Coalescing