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Introduction
WebAssembly is a high-performance assembly-like language. It can be compiled from C/C++, Rust, and AssemblyScript, among other languages. Right now, it is supported by Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox, and Node.js!
The WebAssembly specifies two file formats: a binary format known as a WebAssembly Module (.wasm) and a text representation known as WebAssembly Text (.wat).
Install Wasm-Pack for compilation Rust code to WebAssembly with this
Generate a new project from boilerplate with:
wasm-pack new add
Build with:
cd./add && wasm-pack build --target nodejs
The compilation result will be placed in the pkg directory by default.
Once you have added a WebAssembly module, you can now use the Node.js WebAssembly object to instantiate it.
// Assume add.wasm file exists that contains a single function adding two provided arguments const fs = require('fs'); const wasmBuffer = fs.readFileSync('/path/to/add.wasm'); WebAssembly.instantiate(wasmBuffer).then(wasmModule => { // Exported function live under instance.exports const add = wasmModule.instance.exports.add; const sum = add(5, 6); console.log(sum); // Outputs: 11 });
The output of the above code is 11.
WebAssembly modules are unable to access OS functions on their own. It can only be accessed through a third-party tool like Wasmtime. Wasmtime uses the WASI API to gain access to OS features.
Learn using WebAssembly in NodeJS with more examples. Click here to learn more.
After going through a few examples, try to compare the runtime performance of both WebAssembly and simple JAvascript. You will observe that WebAssembly is faster.
Ans: It is basically a low-level assembly-like language. It uses a small binary format that runs with near-native performance and provides languages like C++, C, C#, and Rust with a compilation target to run them on the web.
Q2: What are the platforms that support Assembly Language.
Currently, it is supported by Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, and Node.js.
Q3: Can JavaScript compile to Wasm?
Ans: Yes, it is possible to call JavaScript functions from inside in your running WebAssembly functions.
Q4: What is a node web?
Ans: Node is an open-source, cross-platform runtime environment. It allows developers to create all kinds of server-side tools and applications in JavaScript.
Key Takeaways
As you can see, WebAssembly is easy to use with Node.js and is faster. WebAssembly is a new technology and still in the experimenting stage, such as using WASI to access system services, but it has a lot of potentials.
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