# immediate [![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/calvinmetcalf/immediate.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/calvinmetcalf/immediate)

[![testling status](https://ci.testling.com/calvinmetcalf/immediate.png)](https://ci.testling.com/calvinmetcalf/immediate)

```
npm install immediate --save
```

then

```js
var immediate = require("immediate");

immediate(function () {
  // this will run soon
});

immediate(function (arg1, arg2) {
  // get your args like in iojs
}, thing1, thing2);
```

## Introduction

**immediate** is a microtask library, descended from [NobleJS's setImmediate](https://github.com/NobleJS/setImmediate), but including ideas from [Cujo's When](https://github.com/cujojs/when) and [RSVP][RSVP].

immediate takes the tricks from setImmediate and RSVP and combines them with the scheduler inspired (vaguely) by when's.

Note versions 2.6.5 and earlier were strictly speaking a 'macrotask' library not a microtask one, [see this for the difference](https://github.com/YuzuJS/setImmediate#macrotasks-and-microtasks), if you need a macrotask library, [I got you covered](https://github.com/calvinmetcalf/macrotask).

Several new features were added in versions 3.1.0 and 3.2.0 to maintain parity with
process.nextTick, but the 3.0.x series is still being kept up to date if you just need
the small barebones version

## The Tricks

### `process.nextTick`

Note that we check for *actual* Node.js environments, not emulated ones like those produced by browserify or similar.

### `queueMicrotask`

Function available in major browser these days which you can use to add a function into the microtask queue managed by V8.

### `MutationObserver`

This is what [RSVP][RSVP] uses, it's very fast, details on [MDN](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/MutationObserver).


### `MessageChannel`

Unfortunately, `postMessage` has completely different semantics inside web workers, and so cannot be used there. So we
turn to [`MessageChannel`][MessageChannel], which has worse browser support, but does work inside a web worker.

### `<script> onreadystatechange`

For our last trick, we pull something out to make things fast in Internet Explorer versions 6 through 8: namely,
creating a `<script>` element and firing our calls in its `onreadystatechange` event. This does execute in a future
turn of the event loop, and is also faster than `setTimeout(…, 0)`, so hey, why not?

## Tricks we don't use

### `setImmediate`
We avoid using `setImmediate` because node's `process.nextTick` is better suited to our needs. Additionally, Internet Explorer 10's implementation of `setImmediate` is broken.


## Reference and Reading

 * [Efficient Script Yielding W3C Editor's Draft][spec]
 * [W3C mailing list post introducing the specification][list-post]
 * [IE Test Drive demo][ie-demo]
 * [Introductory blog post by Nicholas C. Zakas][ncz]
 * I wrote a couple of blog posts on this, [part 1][my-blog-1] and [part 2][my-blog-2]

[RSVP]: https://github.com/tildeio/rsvp.js
[spec]: https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/webperf/raw-file/tip/specs/setImmediate/Overview.html
[list-post]: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-web-perf/2011Jun/0100.html
[ie-demo]: http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/setImmediateSorting/Default.html
[ncz]: http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2011/09/19/script-yielding-with-setimmediate/
[nextTick]: http://nodejs.org/docs/v0.8.16/api/process.html#process_process_nexttick_callback
[postMessage]: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/web-messaging.html#posting-messages
[MessageChannel]: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/web-messaging.html#channel-messaging
[cross-browser-demo]: http://calvinmetcalf.github.io/setImmediate-shim-demo
[my-blog-1]:http://calvinmetcalf.com/post/61672207151/setimmediate-etc
[my-blog-2]:http://calvinmetcalf.com/post/61761231881/javascript-schedulers
