isolate_agents

Package Overview

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IsolateAgents is a Dart package that enables creating stateful agents running on background isolates, allowing safe, concurrent access to shared data without blocking the main thread. It provides a clean abstraction for managing isolate-based state with message passing, ideal for long-running or computationally intensive tasks. The package ensures thread safety by isolating state and communication through well-defined APIs. It's particularly useful in apps requiring persistent background processing, such as real-time data handling or complex calculations.

Use cases

Background data processing
Real-time analytics
Long-running computations
State management across isolates
Cross-isolate communication

Key features

Runs state on background isolates
Thread-safe state management
Message-passing API
Supports all major platforms
Simple agent lifecycle control

Suitable for

Apps needing heavy computation off main thread
Developers using isolates for concurrency
Projects requiring isolated state persistence
Teams building scalable background services
Flutter apps with real-time data needs

Considerations

Requires understanding of Dart isolates
Potential overhead from isolate creation
Limited debugging tools for isolates
Not suitable for simple state needs
Must handle serialization for inter-isolate messages

Original README

Original README snapshot from the linked source repository. Visit the repository for the latest content.

Isolate Agents

Description

Isolate Agents adds a new class, Agent, which is a proper implementation of the Actor model for Dart. Where Isolates have no mechanism for communication, Agents do. It is inspired by Clojure's agents.

Example usage

import 'package:isolate_agents/isolate_agents.dart';

void main() async {
  Agent<int> agent = await Agent.create(() => 1);
  // The following add operation is executed in the Agent's isolate.
  agent.update((int x) => x + 1);
  assert(2 == await agent.exit());
}

Why?

After writing Dart code for a couple of years I realized I was writing the same code over and over again in order to be able to use Isolates. Isolates don't fully implement the Actor model so a handshake of SendPort and a protocol needs to be devised for each non-trivial usage of Isolates. Agents factor all that logic into a reusable package, eliminating the SendPort handshake and standardizing the protocol.

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