Improving long-polling Ajax performance

I'm writing a webapp (Firefox-compatible only) which uses long polling (via jQuery's ajax abilities) to send more-or-less constant updates from the server to the client. I'm concerned about the effects of leaving this running for long periods of time, say, all day or overnight. The basic c开发者_C百科ode skeleton is this:

function processResults(xml)
{
    // do stuff with the xml from the server
}

function fetch()
{
    setTimeout(function ()
    {
        $.ajax({
            type: 'GET',
            url: 'foo/bar/baz',
            dataType: 'xml',
            success: function (xml)
            {
                processResults(xml);
                fetch();
            },
            error: function (xhr, type, exception)
            {
                if (xhr.status === 0)
                {
                console.log('XMLHttpRequest cancelled');
                }
                else
                {
                    console.debug(xhr);
                    fetch();
                }
            }
        });
    }, 500);
}

(The half-second "sleep" is so that the client doesn't hammer the server if the updates are coming back to the client quickly - which they usually are.)

After leaving this running overnight, it tends to make Firefox crawl. I'd been thinking that this could be partially caused by a large stack depth since I've basically written an infinitely recursive function. However, if I use Firebug and throw a breakpoint into fetch, it looks like this is not the case. The stack that Firebug shows me is only about 4 or 5 frames deep, even after an hour.

One of the solutions I'm considering is changing my recursive function to an iterative one, but I can't figure out how I would insert the delay in between Ajax requests without spinning. I've looked at the JS 1.7 "yield" keyword but I can't quite wrap my head around it, to figure out if it's what I need here.

Is the best solution just to do a hard refresh on the page periodically, say, once every hour? Is there a better/leaner long-polling design pattern that won't put a hurt on the browser even after running for 8 or 12 hours? Or should I just skip the long polling altogether and use a different "constant update" pattern since I usually know how frequently the server will have a response for me?

---

It's also possible that it's FireBug. You're console.logging stuff, which means you probably have a network monitor tab open, etc, which means every request is stored in memory.

Try disabling it, see if that helps.

---

I suspect that memory is leaking from processResults().

I have been using very similar code to yours in a long-polling web application, which is able to run uninterrupted for weeks without a page refresh.

Your stack should not be deep, because fetch() returns immediately. You do not have an infinitely recursive loop.

You may want to use the Firefox Leak Monitor Add-on to assist you in finding memory leaks.

---

The stack depth of 4-5 is correct. setTimeout and $.ajax are asynchronous calls, which return immediately. The callback is later called by the browser with an empty call stack. Since you cannot implement long polling in a synchronous way, you must use this recursive approach. There is no way to make it iterative.

I suspect the reason for this slow down is that your code has a memory leak. The leak could either be in $.ajax by jQuery (very unlikely) or in your processResults call.

---

It is a bad idea to call fetch() from inside the method itself. Recursivity is better used when you expect that at some point the method will reach an end and the results will start to be send to the caller. The thing is, when you call the method recursively it keeps the caller method open and using memory. If you are only 3-4 frames deep, it is because jQuery or the browser are somehow "fixing" what you've done.

Recent releases of jquery support long-polling by default. This way you can be sure that yhou are not deppending on browser's intelligence to deal with your infinite recursive call. When calling the $.ajax() method you could use the code below to do a long poll combined with a safe wait of 500 miliseconds before a new call.

function myLongPoll(){
    setTimeout(function(){
        $.ajax({
            type:'POST',
            dataType: 'JSON',
            url: 'http://my.domain.com/action',
            data: {},
            cache: false,
            success:function(data){

                //do something with the result

            },
            complete: myLongPoll, 
            async : false,
            timeout: 5000
        });
   //Doesn't matter how long it took the ajax call, 1 milisec or 
   //5 seconds (timeout), the next call will only happen after 2 seconds
   }, 2000);

This way you can be sure that the $.ajax() call is closed before the next one starts. This can be proved by adding a simple console.log() at the prior and another after your $.ajax() call.