WebTransportBidirectionalStream

Limited availability

This feature is not Baseline because it does not work in some of the most widely-used browsers.

Secure context: This feature is available only in secure contexts (HTTPS), in some or all supporting browsers.

Note: This feature is available in Web Workers.

The WebTransportBidirectionalStream interface of the WebTransport API represents a bidirectional stream created by a server or a client that can be used for reliable transport. Provides access to a WebTransportReceiveStream for reading incoming data, and a WebTransportSendStream for writing outgoing data.

Instance properties

readable Read only

Returns a WebTransportReceiveStream instance that can be used to read incoming data.

writable Read only

Returns a WebTransportSendStream instance that can be used to write outgoing data.

Examples

Bidirectional transmission initiated by the user agent

To open a bidirectional stream from a user agent, you use the WebTransport.createBidirectionalStream() method to get a reference to a WebTransportBidirectionalStream. The readable and writable properties return references to WebTransportReceiveStream and WebTransportSendStream instances. These inherit from ReadableStream and WritableStream respectively, and can be used to read from and write to the server.

js
async function setUpBidirectional() {
  const stream = await transport.createBidirectionalStream();
  // stream is a WebTransportBidirectionalStream
  // stream.readable is a WebTransportReceiveStream
  const readable = stream.readable;
  // stream.writable is a WebTransportSendStream
  const writable = stream.writable;

  ...
}

Reading from the WebTransportReceiveStream can be done in the same way as you would read a ReadableStream:

js
async function readData(readable) {
  const reader = readable.getReader();
  while (true) {
    const { value, done } = await reader.read();
    if (done) {
      break;
    }
    // value is a Uint8Array.
    console.log(value);
  }
}

And writing to the WebTransportSendStream can be done like this:

js
async function writeData(writable) {
  const writer = writable.getWriter();
  const data1 = new Uint8Array([65, 66, 67]);
  const data2 = new Uint8Array([68, 69, 70]);
  writer.write(data1);
  writer.write(data2);
}

Bidirectional transmission initiated by the server

If the server opens a bidirectional stream to transmit data to and receive it from the client, this can be accessed via the WebTransport.incomingBidirectionalStreams property, which returns a ReadableStream of WebTransportBidirectionalStream objects. Each one can be used to read and write Uint8Array instances as shown above. However, you need an initial function to read the bidirectional stream in the first place:

js
async function receiveBidirectional() {
  const bds = transport.incomingBidirectionalStreams;
  const reader = bds.getReader();
  while (true) {
    const { done, value } = await reader.read();
    if (done) {
      break;
    }
    // value is an instance of WebTransportBidirectionalStream
    await readData(value.readable);
    await writeData(value.writable);
  }
}

Specifications

Specification
WebTransport
# webtransportbidirectionalstream

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also