[Javascript] AJAX app causing excessive browser memory usage

[Paul Novitski]

At 04:12 PM 5/18/2006, Rick Emery wrote:
>I have a web application in which the data in a table is refreshed
>every 30 seconds. I'm using AJAX to get the data.
...
>    tmpBody = document.getElementById("eltable").replaceChild(tbody, oldBody);
...
>In both Internet Explorer and Firefox, I can see that, each time the
>xhr response is received and the data updated, the memory consumption
>of the browser  process increases. I expect this if the new table body
>has more rows than the old table, but it happens even when there are
>fewer rows. If I let it run over the weekend, it will eventually
>consume all of the available memory of the machine. Closing the
>browser is the only way to free the memory.


I wonder if it's replaceChild that's the culprit.  Have you tried 
using removeChild and appendChild instead?

I also wonder whether it has to do with replacing a parent element 
that has child nodes.  If so, it might help to walk the DOM removing 
all the children within the table body before removing or replacing it.

I just got 155,000 hits by googling [ajax memory leak] and 78 hits 
for [ajax memory leak replacechild], so you might find answers out 
there on the net.

Paul