Dart Isolates As Workers

Question

Edited to make the question more clear.

I am trying to work with Isolates (or Web Workers) in Dart. The only ways I can find to communicate between the main and isolate threads are send and call & then from the main thread. But that's a nice way for the main thread to pass some data to the isolate.

What's if I want the isolate to be the one who generates information? Like a game engine that does all the physics in a worker and then sends an updated world information to the main thread? In JavaScript you can send data at any time. Is there an efficient way in Dart? Or do I still have to wait for the main thread to call me and then pass it to it?

P.S. I wonder, does call & then block the thread until reply is done or not?

Answer 1

As of Dart 1.0, you can use isolates like this:

import 'dart:isolate';
import 'dart:async';

void doStuff(SendPort sendPort) {
  print('hi from inside isolate');
  ReceivePort receivePort = new ReceivePort();
  sendPort.send(receivePort.sendPort);

  receivePort.listen((msg) {
    print('Received in isolate: [$msg]');
    sendPort.send('ECHO: $msg');
  });

}

void main() {
  SendPort sendPort;

  ReceivePort receive = new ReceivePort();
  receive.listen((msg) {
    if (sendPort == null) {
      sendPort = msg;
    } else {
      print('From isolate: $msg');
    }
  });

  int counter = 0;

  Isolate.spawn(doStuff, receive.sendPort).then((isolate) {
    new Timer.periodic(const Duration(seconds:1), (t) {
      sendPort.send('Count is ${counter++}');
    });
  });
}