Intent to Implement: Serial API
Reilly Grant
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Explainer
https://github.com/reillyeon/serial/blob/explainer/EXPLAINER.md
Spec
Summary
The Serial API provides an interface for connecting to physical and virtual serial ports. It will share the same chooser-based permissions model as other hardware APIs such as Web Bluetooth and WebUSB. Development of the specification will proceed in parallel to implementation.
Motivation
Operating systems require applications to use different APIs depending on what interface a device exposes. The Serial API fills a gap left by Web Bluetooth and WebUSB where devices which implement a serial port interface are not covered by neither the former (because it does not support Bluetooth Classic) nor the latter (because a system driver has already claimed exclusive access to the device).
Risks
Interoperability and Compatibility
The primary risk of this API is that it will not be implemented by other vendors. It shared a lot with the Web Bluetooth and WebUSB APIs which so far have only been implemented by Chrome. While there have been no public signals from Edge and Safari it is clear from the fact that the original specification was abandoned by Mozilla (and their reaction to similar specifications) that Firefox’s position is negative. Web developers, commenting on the proposal to incubate this specification in the WICG, have displayed overwhelmingly positive support because of the possibilities it opens up for supporting additional hardware devices.
Edge: No signals
Firefox: Negative signals
Safari: No signals
Web developers: Positive signals
Ergonomics
Developers using this API may also be building applications that use other hardware APIs such as Web Bluetooth and WebUSB. Each of these interfaces have differences that reflect the underlying transport however we should be sure that user-facing abstractions such as permissions are handled in a consistent way. Integration with the Permissions API could, for example, permit authors to request permission to access a device across multiple API surfaces, this solving the problem of a device which may be accessible via the Serial API on platforms which include a driver for it, with a fallback to WebUSB on platforms without.
Activation
Developers should be able to take advantage of this API immediately. Those using the chrome.serial API (only available to Chrome Apps) will find it relatively easy to port their applications.
Debuggability
This is a JavaScript interface supported by the existing DevTools debugger.
Will this feature be supported on all six Blink platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, Chrome OS, Android, and Android WebView)?
This feature will be supported by all platforms except Android WebView.
Is this feature fully tested by web-platform-tests?
No, but it will be.
Link to entry on the feature dashboard
https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/6577673212002304
Requesting approval to ship?
No.
Lucas Garron
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Reilly Grant
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amir karimi
I hope you are well.
I have been trying o get WebSerial working in my React app. It works fine in ideal conditions. However, if the serial device spams the serial port with a lot of data very fast before serialport.connect() happens, I get "BufferOverrunError".
I increased the buffer size from 255 to 4095 but still it fails. Is there any method to empty the buffer or recover from the error when this happens?
Thanks,
Amir