Web Audio API: Add error reporting via AudioContext.onerror

[gsinafirooz]

こんにちは TAG-さん!

I'm requesting a TAG review of AudioContext.onerror.

Report a failure from acquiring system audio resources and audio rendering errors to web applications via a callback assigned to AudioContext.onerror.

• Explainer¹ (minimally containing user needs and example code): N/A This is a small change. So I figured doing it inline. Currently there is no way for the user's agent to know if their AudioContext has failed either at creation (instantiation of AudioContext) or while rendering. At such failure, the web application silently acts as though audio is working correctly even though it's not. Having AudioContext know of the platform's AudioDestination rendering failure will enable the developers to plan a recovery. This design proposes adding the event attribute onerror to the existing WebAudio API class AudioContext. The user's agent will call that at failures.

• User research: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1DNjlh_JwjfwDzoULAUx5wUj2Igrx-eUbZ2ZHltLGOZo/preview?slide=id.g9bcfd5e720_0_18 That's our top un-shipped feature request.

• Security and Privacy self-review²: N/A

• GitHub repo (if you prefer feedback filed there): https://github.com/WebAudio/web-audio-api

• Primary contacts (and their relationship to the specification):

  • Hongchan Choi (hoch), Google
  • Sina Firoozabadi (gsinafirooz), Google

• Organization/project driving the design: Google

• External status/issue trackers for this feature (publicly visible, e.g. Chrome Status):

  • github.com/WebAudio/web-audio-api/issues/2567
  • https://chromestatus.com/feature/5113439453446144

Further details:

• [x] I have reviewed the TAG's Web Platform Design Principles
• The group where the incubation/design work on this is being done (or is intended to be done in the future): W3C Audio Working Group and W3C Audio Community Group
• The group where standardization of this work is intended to be done ("unknown" if not known): W3C Audio Working Group and W3C Audio Community Group
• Existing major pieces of multi-stakeholder review or discussion of this design: github.com/WebAudio/web-audio-api/pull/2580
• Major unresolved issues with or opposition to this design: None
• This work is being funded by: N/A

[martinthomson]

Hi @gsinafirooz, thanks for filing this. What we can see looks reasonable, and we think that a more thorough review isn't warranted. Given that this is so small we're going to defer to the working group for this.

[LeaVerou]

Also, we wanted to point out that we have Q & A section exactly for these types of smaller scope API design questions that is meant to be lighter process-wise than a design review.