bare-ipc

Reference for bare-ipc: lightweight pipe-based inter-process communication for Bare, with structured-clone message ports.

stable

bare-ipc provides lightweight pipe-based inter-process communication for Bare. It pairs two ports over bare-pipe and exchanges structured-cloned messages between them. It's pure JavaScript. (For the host↔worklet channel in native apps, see bare-kit instead.)

npm i bare-ipc

Usage

const IPC = require('bare-ipc')

const [portA, portB] = IPC.open()

const a = portA.connect()
const b = portB.connect()

a.on('data', (data) => { /* received from b */ }).end('hello b')

API

`IPC`

`const [portA, portB] = IPC.open()`

Create a connected pair of IPCPorts.

`const ipc = new IPC(port)`

Returns a duplex stream using the provided port. See bare-stream's Duplex for the full duplex stream API.

Errors emitted by the underlying incoming or outgoing pipes are propagated to the stream as error events, after which the stream is destroyed.

`ipc.incoming`

The underlying bare-pipe Pipe used for reading. Read-only.

`ipc.outgoing`

The underlying bare-pipe Pipe used for writing. Read-only.

`ipc.ref()`

Increase the reference count for the IPC to keep the event loop alive.

A common pattern is to call ipc.ref() on resume and ipc.unref() on suspend:

Bare.on('suspend', () => ipc.unref()).on('resume', () => ipc.ref())

`ipc.unref()`

Decrease the reference count for the IPC to allow the event loop to exit.

See ipc.ref() for the common pattern.

`IPCPort`

`const port = new IPCPort(incoming, outgoing)`

Constructs a port from a pair of file handles. incoming is the read file handle; outgoing is the write file handle.

`const ipc = port.connect()`

Returns an IPC connected to the port and marks the port as detached. Once detached, the port cannot be transferred again.

`port.incoming`

The read file handle. Read-only.

`port.outgoing`

The write file handle. Read-only.

`port.detached`

A boolean indicating whether the port is detached. A port becomes detached once it is connected or transferred.

Builds on bare-pipe, bare-stream, and bare-structured-clone (see Bare modules).