Managing Dart Concurrency and Isolates

Contents

• Core Guidelines
• Choosing the Right Isolate Strategy
• Implementing One-Off Tasks
• Implementing Long-Running Workers
• Workflows
• Examples

Core Guidelines

• Isolate Memory: Assume zero shared memory between isolates. Isolates communicate exclusively via message passing.
• Data Transfer: Avoid passing large mutable objects between isolates. Prefer simple data types or immutable records to minimize serialization overhead.
• Resource Management: Always ensure isolates and ports are terminated when no longer needed to prevent memory leaks.
• Platform Limitations: Do not use isolates on the Dart Web platform. Web compiles to JavaScript, which uses Web Workers instead.
• Related Skills: Refer to dart-async-programming for standard asynchronous operations (Future, Stream, async/await) running on the Main Isolate.

Choosing the Right Isolate Strategy