workbox-broadcast-update

What is workbox-broadcast-update?

The workbox-broadcast-update package is part of the Workbox suite of libraries, which are designed to make service workers and offline functionality in web applications easier to implement and more robust. Specifically, workbox-broadcast-update is used to notify web app pages when a cached response has been updated. This is particularly useful for pages that are open in the browser and need to be informed about fresh data available in the cache, allowing the app to react and update the UI accordingly.

What are workbox-broadcast-update's main functionalities?

Broadcasting cache updates

This code sample demonstrates how to use the BroadcastUpdatePlugin within a service worker to automatically notify pages when a cached response from an API route has been updated. It uses the NetworkFirst strategy, meaning it tries to fetch the latest response from the network first before falling back to the cache. When a new response is fetched and cached, the BroadcastUpdatePlugin sends a message to all open pages to inform them of the update.

import {BroadcastUpdatePlugin} from 'workbox-broadcast-update';

workbox.routing.registerRoute(
  ({url}) => url.pathname.startsWith('/api'),
  new workbox.strategies.NetworkFirst({
    plugins: [
      new BroadcastUpdatePlugin()
    ],
  }),
);

Other packages similar to workbox-broadcast-update

sw-precache

sw-precache is a package that generates a service worker to precache resources of a web app. While it focuses on precaching and serving assets from the cache, it does not offer built-in functionality for broadcasting cache updates to the pages of an app like workbox-broadcast-update does. However, it can be used in conjunction with custom code to achieve similar effects.

sw-toolbox

sw-toolbox provides various caching strategies for handling network requests in service workers. Similar to workbox-broadcast-update, it aims to enhance offline capabilities and performance of web apps. However, sw-toolbox does not have a built-in mechanism for broadcasting updates about cached content to the app's pages. Developers would need to implement their own solution for notifying pages about cache updates.

README

This module's documentation can be found at https://developers.google.com/web/tools/workbox/modules/workbox-broadcast-update