Introducing Threadosaurus: Simplify Worker Threads in Node.js with TypeScript

Managing worker threads in Node.js can be complex. That’s where Threadosaurus comes in — a simple, intuitive library that streamlines the process of creating and running worker threads in Node.js using TypeScript.

Why Threadosaurus?
Worker threads are an essential feature in Node.js for handling CPU-intensive tasks without blocking the main event loop. However, using them can introduce challenges like managing worker creation, handling communication between main process and worker thread, timeouts, and handling errors as expected.

Many other libraries rely on providing the worker thread a filename directly, which can lead to runtime errors if the path is incorrect or misconfigured. Threadosaurus simplifies this process by automatically handling the worker class and filename setup, reducing the chances of such errors and improving code reliability.

You have a single function called CreateThreadosaurus, you pass on your class and that’s it! You now have an instance you can call where every method is run in a worker thread!

There are some limitations which are discussed directly in the repo.

Let’s see how a simple typical setup looks like.

import { CreateThreadosaurus } from 'threadosaurus';
import SampleWorkerThreadClass from './SampleWorkerThreadClass';

const worker = CreateThreadosaurus(SampleWorkerThreadClass);
console.log(await worker.greet('LJ and NJ'));

Worker file example

import { Threadosaurus } from 'threadosaurus';

export default class SampleWorkerThreadClass implements Threadosaurus {
    async greet(name: string): Promise<string> {
        return Promise.resolve(`Hello ${name} from worker thread!`);
    }

    get__filename(): string {
        return __filename;
    }
}

And that’s it!

Head on to the repo to get started in no time!