Proposal: Periodic Background Sync

MugdhaLakhani · 2019-04-29

Periodic Background Sync is an extension of Background Sync. It enables websites to register tasks to be run in a service worker at periodic intervals with network connectivity. This will allow offline-first web apps to periodically update state, and will enable periodic content producers like news sites to push content to users’ devices periodically.

At present, sites can achieve this using Push messages, but need to set up a server for that.

Status

There’s an explainer at https://github.com/beverloo/periodic-background-sync.

There’s an intent to implement for Chromium. This will help guide the design of the spec and API. We also plan to conduct an origin trial to assess API usability and make changes as a result.

MugdhaLakhani · 2019-08-02

An Intent to Experiment is now out for Periodic Background Sync!

MugdhaLakhani · 2019-11-07

The explainer has now moved to the WICG repository here:

github.com

WICG/BackgroundSync/blob/master/explainers/periodicsync-explainer.md

# Periodic Background Sync

**Written**: 2019-09-30<br/>
**Updated**: 2019-09-30

Periodic Background Sync is a method that enables web applications to periodically synchronize data
in the background, building on the [Background Sync](https://wicg.github.io/BackgroundSync/spec/)
specification that defines a method for one-off synchronization.

The [original explainer](https://github.com/WICG/BackgroundSync/blob/master/explainers/sync-explainer.md#periodic-synchronization-in-design)
included a thorough exploration of this capability, but it neither got specified, nor ever shipped
in a browsing engine. This was caused by a combination of low interest from both developers and
other browser engines, and high complexity due to an unclear permission model. We believe the
situation has changed since.

If this proposal stands, we plan to extend the [Background Sync](https://wicg.github.io/BackgroundSync/spec/)
specification to describe this ability as well, and move the document to the standardization track.

## Use cases
Consider a website that's offline enabled. It uses service workers to provide an almost

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MugdhaLakhani · 2019-12-06

We’re spinning up a new WICG repository for Periodic Background Sync.

The spec (current location: https://wicg.github.io/BackgroundSync/spec/PeriodicBackgroundSync-index.html) and the explainer (current location: https://wicg.github.io/BackgroundSync/explainers/periodicsync-explainer.md) will redirect to the new location, which I will also post here once available.

jungkees · 2019-12-10

We (Microsoft) are interested in discussing and implementing this proposal. We support spinning up a separate repository for this feature on GitHub.

yoavweiss · 2020-01-20

Belatedly, I’ve set up a dedicated repo: https://github.com/WICG/periodic-background-sync