Asyncify

This is a JavaScript wrapper intended to be used with Asyncify feature of Binaryen.

Together, they allow to use asynchronous APIs (such as most Web APIs) from within WebAssembly written and compiled from any source language.

About this fork

Asyncify relies on a reserved space in memory to save and restore the program's stack for async operations.

The original version of Asyncify is hardcoding the reserved stack space's size to 1024 bytes and at a specific location. If the stack of your program exceeded 1024 bytes it would run into a trap.

This fork allows the user to customize where and how large the Asyncify stack space is (see WebAssembly side usage).

Usage

WebAssembly side

Allocate the Asyncify stack space (statically or dynamically) and expose its location / size with get_asyncify_stack_space_ptr / get_asyncify_stack_space_size functions respectively:

/// Arbitrary stack size of 50kib.
const ASYNCIFY_STACK_SIZE: usize = 50 * 1024;
/// Scratch space used by Asyncify to save/restore stacks.
static ASYNCIFY_STACK: [u8; ASYNCIFY_STACK_SIZE] = [0; ASYNCIFY_STACK_SIZE];

#[no_mangle]
extern "C" fn get_asyncify_stack_space_ptr() -> i32 {
    ASYNCIFY_STACK.as_ptr() as i32
}

#[no_mangle]
extern "C" fn get_asyncify_stack_space_size() -> i32 {
    ASYNCIFY_STACK_SIZE as i32
}

Import and use required APIs as regular synchronous FFI functions in your code.

After the code is compiled to WebAssembly, post-process it using wasm-opt from the Binaryen toolchain:

wasm-opt --asyncify [-O] [[email protected],...] in.wasm -o out.wasm

JavaScript side

Install:

yarn add --dev @xtuc/asyncify-wasm
# or
npm install -D @xtuc/asyncify-wasm

First, import asyncify via:

import * as Asyncify from '@xtuc/asyncify-wasm';

Compilation / instantiation APIs are designed to be drop-in replacements for those of regular WebAssembly interface, but with async support.

Then, you can use new Asyncify.Instance, Asyncify.instantiate and Asyncify.instantiateStreaming like you would with corresponding WebAssembly functions, but with added support for async imports and all exports wrapped into async functions, too.

For example:

let { instance } = await Asyncify.instantiateStreaming(fetch('./out.wasm'), {
  get_resource_text: async url => {
    let response = await fetch(readWasmString(instance, url));
    if (!response.ok) {
      throw new Error(`HTTP ${response.status}: ${response.statusText}`);
    }
    return passStringToWasm(instance, await response.text());
  }
});

await instance.exports._start();