Memory leak in Browser when using WebIO + Interact (+ VegaLite)?

General Usage
,
1

My browser tab consumes unlimited amount of memory after I evaluated the following snippet in a Jupyter notebook and dragged the slider back and forth quickly for a dozen of times.

Throttling the slider observable alleviates but does not cure the memory issue. So I guess that some Javascript object sent to the browser is somehow not freed.

Another issue is that I have to refresh the notebook webpage once before the slider works.

Some maybe relevant info:
Julia: v1.1.0
browser: Google Chrome Version 72.0.3626.119 (Official Build) (64-bit)
OS: Archlinux
WebIO: #master
Interact: 0.9.1
IJulia: 1.17.0

Any suggestions appreciated!

using DataFrames
using Interact
using JSExpr
using WebIO
using VegaLite: @vlplot
ASSETS = [
    "vega-lib"=>"https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/vega@4.4.0/build/vega.min.js",
    "vega-lite"=>"https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/vega-lite@3.0.0-rc12/build/vega-lite.min.js",
    "https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/vega-embed@3.29.1/build/vega-embed.min.js",
];
n = 10_000

f(v) = DataFrame(x=1:n, y=sin.((1:n)./v)) |> @vlplot(:line, x="x", y="y") |> spc->spc.params

w = Scope(;imports=ASSETS)
onimport(w, @js function (vg,vl,ve)
# can this be the culprit? But otherwise I don't know how to access the imported modules.
    self.ve = function (spc)
        ve("#ddd", spc)
    end
end)
obs = Observable(w, "spc", f(1))

s = slider(1:n)
on(s) do v
    obs[] = f(v)
end

onjs(obs, @js val -> begin
    self.ve(val)
end)

s |> display
w(node(:div, "aaaa"; id="ddd")) |> display
2

I’m not really familiar with WebIO and Interact, so other than saying that we didn’t take support for that into account in how we designed VegaLite.jl, I don’t have any further insights into that particular combo.

Having said that, maybe another tactic would be to use Vega-Lite interactions directly to achieve a similar outcome? They are documented at Selection Parameters | Vega-Lite. That would only work in either JupyterLab or nteract, not in the classic notebook, though.

3

For my application client side filtering and transformation is not feasible and needs to be done in Julia on a cluster. Moreover a few weeks ago I tried Jupiter lab but interactivity was lacking due to possible version issues with the vega/vegalite they ship. Using webio is also a bit faster because ijulia render svg and png version of a vegalite specification regardless of whether a richer/better mime type is showable.

That said I really like the mini DSL in VegaLite.jl. I find it much easier to write than vanilla json specifications. Thank you for making it!