This property is true if the worker exited due to .disconnect(). If the worker exited any other way, it is false. If the worker has not exited, it is undefined.

The boolean worker.exitedAfterDisconnect allows distinguishing between voluntary and accidental exit, the primary may choose not to respawn a worker based on this value.

cluster.on('exit', (worker, code, signal) => {
  if (worker.exitedAfterDisconnect === true) {
    console.log('Oh, it was just voluntary – no need to worry');
  }
});

// kill worker
worker.kill();

Each new worker is given its own unique id, this id is stored in the id.

While a worker is alive, this is the key that indexes it in cluster.workers.

All workers are created using child_process.fork(), the returned object from this function is stored as .process. In a worker, the global process is stored.

See: Child Process module.

Workers will call process.exit(0) if the 'disconnect' event occurs on process and .exitedAfterDisconnect is not true. This protects against accidental disconnection.

events.EventEmitter

1. disconnect
2. error
3. exit
4. listening
5. message
6. online

In a worker, this function will close all servers, wait for the 'close' event on those servers, and then disconnect the IPC channel.

In the primary, an internal message is sent to the worker causing it to call .disconnect() on itself.

Causes .exitedAfterDisconnect to be set.

After a server is closed, it will no longer accept new connections, but connections may be accepted by any other listening worker. Existing connections will be allowed to close as usual. When no more connections exist, see server.close(), the IPC channel to the worker will close allowing it to die gracefully.

The above applies only to server connections, client connections are not automatically closed by workers, and disconnect does not wait for them to close before exiting.

In a worker, process.disconnect exists, but it is not this function; it is disconnect().

Because long living server connections may block workers from disconnecting, it may be useful to send a message, so application specific actions may be taken to close them. It also may be useful to implement a timeout, killing a worker if the 'disconnect' event has not been emitted after some time.

import net from 'node:net';

if (cluster.isPrimary) {
  const worker = cluster.fork();
  let timeout;

  worker.on('listening', (address) => {
    worker.send('shutdown');
    worker.disconnect();
    timeout = setTimeout(() => {
      worker.kill();
    }, 2000);
  });

  worker.on('disconnect', () => {
    clearTimeout(timeout);
  });

} else if (cluster.isWorker) {
  const server = net.createServer((socket) => {
    // Connections never end
  });

  server.listen(8000);

  process.on('message', (msg) => {
    if (msg === 'shutdown') {
      // Initiate graceful close of any connections to server
    }
  });
}

This function returns true if the worker is connected to its primary via its IPC channel, false otherwise. A worker is connected to its primary after it has been created. It is disconnected after the 'disconnect' event is emitted.

This function returns true if the worker's process has terminated (either because of exiting or being signaled). Otherwise, it returns false.

import cluster from 'node:cluster';
import http from 'node:http';
import { availableParallelism } from 'node:os';
import process from 'node:process';

const numCPUs = availableParallelism();

if (cluster.isPrimary) {
  console.log(`Primary ${process.pid} is running`);

  // Fork workers.
  for (let i = 0; i < numCPUs; i++) {
    cluster.fork();
  }

  cluster.on('fork', (worker) => {
    console.log('worker is dead:', worker.isDead());
  });

  cluster.on('exit', (worker, code, signal) => {
    console.log('worker is dead:', worker.isDead());
  });
} else {
  // Workers can share any TCP connection. In this case, it is an HTTP server.
  http.createServer((req, res) => {
    res.writeHead(200);
    res.end(`Current process\n ${process.pid}`);
    process.kill(process.pid);
  }).listen(8000);
}

This function will kill the worker. In the primary worker, it does this by disconnecting the worker.process, and once disconnected, killing with signal. In the worker, it does it by killing the process with signal.

The kill() function kills the worker process without waiting for a graceful disconnect, it has the same behavior as worker.process.kill().

This method is aliased as worker.destroy() for backwards compatibility.

In a worker, process.kill() exists, but it is not this function; it is kill().

Send a message to a worker or primary, optionally with a handle.

In the primary, this sends a message to a specific worker. It is identical to ChildProcess.send().

In a worker, this sends a message to the primary. It is identical to process.send().

This example will echo back all messages from the primary:

if (cluster.isPrimary) {
  const worker = cluster.fork();
  worker.send('hi there');

} else if (cluster.isWorker) {
  process.on('message', (msg) => {
    process.send(msg);
  });
}