# web-spawn
[](https://crates.io/crates/web-spawn)
[](https://docs.rs/web-spawn)
This crate provides a `std::thread` shim for WASM builds targeting web browsers.
It borrows from and is heavily inspired by both [`wasm-bindgen-rayon`](https://crates.io/crates/wasm-bindgen-rayon) and [`wasm_thread`](https://crates.io/crates/wasm_thread) but makes a couple different design choices.
Most notably, spawning is explicitly delegated to run in a background task and must be initialized at the start of the program. This task can either run on the main browser thread, or be moved to a dedicated worker to avoid potential interference from other loads.
# Usage
Add `web-spawn` as a dependency in your `Cargo.toml`:
```toml
[target.'cfg(target_arch = "wasm32")'.dependencies]
web-spawn = { version = "0.1" }
```
Then **you must ensure that spawning is initialized**. One way to do this is to re-export the following function:
```rust,ignore
pub use web_spawn::start_spawner;
```
On the javascript side this can be awaited:
```javascript
import init, { startSpawner } from /* your package */;
await init();
// Runs the spawner on a dedicated web worker.
await startSpawner();
```
Now, in the rest of your Rust code you can conditionally use `web-spawn` anywhere you would otherwise use `std::thread::spawn`:
```rust,ignore
#[cfg(target_arch = "wasm32")]
use web_spawn as thread;
#[cfg(not(target_arch = "wasm32"))]
use std::thread;
```