On Sep 10, 2009, at 11:22 AM, Michael Nordman wrote:
On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 7:55 PM, Robert O'Callahan <[email protected]
> wrote:
On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 2:38 PM, Michael Nordman
<[email protected]> wrote:
If this feature existed, we likely would have used it for offline
Gmail to coordinate which instance of the app (page with gmail in
it) should be responsible for sync'ing the local database with the
mail service. In the absence of a feature like this, instead we used
the local database itself to register which page was the
'syncagent'. This involved periodically updating the db by the
syncagent, and periodic polling by the would be syncagents waiting
to possibly take over. Much ugliness.
var isSyncAgent = false;
window.acquireFlag("syncAgency", function() { isSyncAgent = true; });
Much nicer.
How do you deal with the user closing the syncagent while other app
instances remain open?
In our db polling world... that was why the syncagent periodically
updated the db... to say "still alive"... on close it would say "i'm
gone" and on ugly exit, the others would notice the lack of "still
alives" and fight about who was it next. A silly bunch of complexity
for something so simple.
In the acquireFlag world... wouldn't the page going away simply
relinquish the flag?
How would the pages that failed to acquire it before know that they
should try to acquire it again? Presumably they would still have to
poll (assuming the "tryLock" model).
Regards,
Maciej
