Create notification by webworker

Question

In article about notifications Mozzila says:

Note: This feature is available in Web Workers.

Worker can be created without any warnings

var worker = new SharedWorker('scripts/worker.js');

But when I try to do this inside shared worker:

var notification = new Notification("Hi there!");

It doesn't work. Webworker works fine, it does a XMLHttpRequest, it can read data from main thread and push messages to it but notification doesn't appear. I can't debug it because console is unavailable inside webworker. Permission was granted in main thread and the notifications are also available here.

If it is important I use Chrome 47.0.2526.111 m for developing and debugging. I noticed that Facebook invokes notifications even when FB tab is closed so I am trying to implement something similar.

Answer 1

You are doing something wrong. I had absolutely no problems running notifications in web workers.

This code works perfectly on jsfiddle:

• Worker example
• SharedWorker example

Please try following code:

main.js

var worker = new SharedWorker("worker.js");
worker.port.start();    
Notification.requestPermission(function (permission) {
  // If the user accepts, let's create a notification
  if (permission === "granted") {
    worker.port.postMessage({name:"notification"});
  }
});

worker.js

function workerFN() {
  function onmessage(e) {
    switch(e.data.name) {
      case "notification" : 
        console.log("Notification:");
        var notification = new Notification("Hi there!");
      break;
      default:
        console.error("Unknown message:", e.data.name);
    }
  }
  self.onconnect = function(e) {
      for(var i=0,l=e.ports.length; i<l; i++) {
        e.ports[i].addEventListener('message', onmessage);
        e.ports[i].start(); // Required when using addEventListener. Otherwise called implicitly by onmessage setter.
      }
  }
}

Also console works quite well for me in web workers.