Intent to Ship: Web Serial API on Android

[Chromestatus]

Contact emails

o...@google.com, xu...@google.com

Explainer

No information provided

Specification

No information provided

Summary

The Web Serial API provides an interface for connecting to serial devices, either through a serial port on the user’s system or removable USB and Bluetooth devices that emulate a serial port. Now it is supported on Android. Users, especially in the educational, hobbyist and industrial sectors, connect peripheral devices to their computers that require custom software to control. For example, robotics are often used to teach computer programming and electronics in schools. This requires software which can upload code to a robot and/or control it remotely. In an industrial or hobbyist setting a piece of equipment such as a mill, laser cutter or 3D printer is controlled by a program running on a connected computer. These devices are often controlled by small microcontrollers via a serial connection. Documentation: https://web.dev/serial/ Specification: https://wicg.github.io/serial/

Blink component

Blink>Serial

Web Feature ID

serial

Motivation

No information provided

Initial public proposal

No information provided

TAG review

No information provided

TAG review status

Issues addressed

Goals for experimentation

None

Risks

Interoperability and Compatibility

No information provided

Gecko: No signal

WebKit: No signal

Web developers: No signals

Other signals:

WebView application risks

Does this intent deprecate or change behavior of existing APIs, such that it has potentially high risk for Android WebView-based applications?

No information provided

Debuggability

No information provided

Will this feature be supported on all six Blink platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, ChromeOS, Android, and Android WebView)?

No

Is this feature fully tested by web-platform-tests?

No

Flag name on about://flags

No information provided

Finch feature name

WebSerialWiredDevicesAndroid

Rollout plan

Will ship enabled for all users

Requires code in //chrome?

False

Tracking bug

https://g-issues.chromium.org/issues/365514951

Launch bug

https://launch.corp.google.com/launch/4387322

Estimated milestones

Shipping on Android

148

Anticipated spec changes

Open questions about a feature may be a source of future web compat or interop issues. Please list open issues (e.g. links to known github issues in the project for the feature specification) whose resolution may introduce web compat/interop risk (e.g., changing to naming or structure of the API in a non-backward-compatible way).

No information provided

Link to entry on the Chrome Platform Status

https://chromestatus.com/feature/6043992171085824?gate=5862339666640896

Links to previous Intent discussions

Intent to Ship: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/yGhvQ6mEmcY/m/xr-aYJ-_AQAJ

This intent message was generated by Chrome Platform Status.

[Philip Jägenstedt]

Hi,

I see that there are existing tests in https://wpt.fyi/results/serial?label=experimental&label=master&aligned, but only for things that don't require actually creating a device.

Do at least these tests also pass on Android?

Is any work happening to make Serial testable in WPT in general? Something along the lines of https://web-platform-tests.org/writing-tests/testdriver.html#bluetooth should work.

Best regards,

Philip

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[Philip Jägenstedt]

Actually, per https://www.chromium.org/blink/launching-features/#:~:text=Changes%20which%20extend%20an%20already%20exposed%20API%20to%20additional%20platforms this doesn't need approval since it already shipped on other platforms. Rubberstamp LGTM1+LGTM2+LGTM3.

[Reilly Grant]

Since this requires OS-level support for an application like Chrome to connect to a serial device, what Android versions and device form-factors will this work on?  

Reilly Grant | Software Engineer | rei...@chromium.org | Google Chrome

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/blink-dev/CAARdPYd2CVPYCX_Jr9MxPS0rgDErFTYW98bbZwOB3WeVQ4yw4Q%40mail.gmail.com.

[Garfield Tan]

The API will be available on Android 17 this year. All Android devices have that API, but only devices configured to expose wired serial ports will return non-empty lists of serial ports. All other devices will always return empty lists.