Eli Grey

Reusable pmxdr instances

I just released version 0.0.4 of the pmxdr client code to support reusable instances where the same iframe can be used for mutiple pmxdr requests to a domain. It’s still the same interface, but you need to call pmxdr.request() instead of pmxdr() to do a normal request. Instances are created with new pmxdr(host) where host is any URI from the website you want to request (pmxdr figures out where the API is located automatically). Then just call the request method on the instance once the interface iframe has loaded, which you can find out when instance calls it’s onload method once it’s loaded if you set it. The request method now also accepts an array of requests. To start loading the instance, you call it’s init method. To remove the interface frame, you call it’s unload method. Another thing added is the ability to completely remove pmxdr using its destruct method, which removes all event listeners and deletes the pmxdr variable. This does not delete any still-existing interface frames so don’t forget to unload them when you are done to avoid memory leaks.

Using reusable instances saves much more overhead than repeatedly re-requesting a website’s pmxdr host api. When I updated the demo to use a single instance for requesting eligrey.com, it started finishing a multitude of times faster. This is an example of using a reusable instance that uses one interface to make three requests:

var exampleDotCom = new pmxdr("http://example.com");
exampleDotCom.onload = function() {
  this.request([
    {
      uri     : "/foo.html",
      callback: responseHandlers.foo
    },{
      uri     : "/bar.html",
      callback: responseHandlers.bar
    },{
      uri     : "/baz.html",
      callback: responseHandlers.baz
    }
  ]);
};
exampleDotCom.init()
// after all responseHandlers[x] are called, call exampleDotCom.unload()

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