Web: Typescript and synchronous construction

[mikezaby]

Hi! I have two questions/feature requests:

• TypeScript types: Would it be possible to provide TypeScript type definitions for this package?
• Synchronous constructor — Is there a reason the constructor needs to be asynchronous? I understand I can use await, but all other AudioNode implementations I’ve used (either built-in WebAudio AudioNodes or custom AudioWorklets) are synchronous. Is there a technical limitation that requires this to be async, or could a synchronous constructor be supported?

Thanks!

[geraintluff]

Thanks for the issue!

Typescript

You're not the first person to request this, but I'm not a TS developer myself, so I tried writing some definitions and got quite stuck.

There was also supposedly some way to write JSDoc and generate TS definitions from that, but I couldn't get that to work well enough either. If you're a TS dev, I'd love advice or help on this!

Synchronous constructor

We need to call addModule() on the AudioWorklet before we can construct the AudioNode, and that's asynchronous.

Once it's been added, the constructor could be synchronous, but that'd require you to call addModule() yourself - which sounds simple, but is awkward in apps where the JS is otherwise bundled into a single file. Stretch constructs a URL containing its own code (✨JavaScript is Magic✨) which works from within bundles as well.

How do the other custom AudioWorkletNodes you've used handle this?

[mikezaby]

Thanks for the quick response!

TypeScript

I’d be happy to help with TypeScript definitions, if I could manage to understand the project.

Synchronous constructor

Regarding addModule(): would it be possible to expose a separate, one-time prepare function that handles the async setup? Something like:

await Stretch.prepare(context);
const node = new StretchNode(context);

This way the module loading happens asynchronously, but once it’s done, creating the node itself can be synchronous.