workbox-window

What is workbox-window?

The workbox-window npm package is a module designed to simplify the integration of Workbox into a web application. It provides an easy-to-use interface for registering and communicating with a service worker, handling service worker updates, and managing the lifecycle events of the service worker within the context of a web page.

What are workbox-window's main functionalities?

Registering a service worker

This feature allows you to register a service worker with ease. The Workbox object is instantiated with the path to the service worker file, and the register method is called to start the registration process.

import { Workbox } from 'workbox-window';

if ('serviceWorker' in navigator) {
  const wb = new Workbox('/sw.js');

  wb.register();
}

Listening to service worker lifecycle events

This feature allows you to add event listeners for various service worker lifecycle events such as 'installed', 'activated', and 'waiting'. This example shows how to listen for the 'installed' event and log messages depending on whether it's an update or a first-time installation.

import { Workbox } from 'workbox-window';

const wb = new Workbox('/sw.js');

wb.addEventListener('installed', (event) => {
  if (event.isUpdate) {
    console.log('Service worker has been updated!');
  } else {
    console.log('Service worker has been installed for the first time!');
  }
});

wb.register();

Prompting user to update the service worker

This feature allows you to prompt the user when a new service worker version is available and waiting to be activated. The 'waiting' event is used to detect this state, and 'messageSkipWaiting' is called to activate the new service worker if the user confirms.

import { Workbox } from 'workbox-window';

const wb = new Workbox('/sw.js');

wb.addEventListener('waiting', () => {
  if (confirm('A new version is available, update now?')) {
    wb.messageSkipWaiting();
  }
});

wb.register();

Other packages similar to workbox-window

sw-toolbox

sw-toolbox is a legacy package that provides similar service worker runtime caching strategies. It has been deprecated in favor of Workbox, which offers a more modular and flexible approach to building service worker functionality.

offline-plugin

offline-plugin is a Webpack plugin designed to provide offline experience for web apps. It automatically adds a service worker and an AppCache fallback for older browsers. While it simplifies the process of making a web app work offline, it is less flexible than Workbox and is tied to the Webpack ecosystem.

serviceworker-webpack-plugin

serviceworker-webpack-plugin integrates with Webpack to generate a service worker for your web app. It's more low-level compared to workbox-window and requires more manual configuration to set up caching strategies and other service worker features.

README

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