webnet/packages/transport

@webnet/transport

Transport abstractions and implementations for webnet.

The package defines RawTransport, RawDialer, and RawListener, the byte-stream interfaces every protocol package (http, ssh, ftp, webdav, smb2, ...) is built on: connect, accept, read a chunk, write a chunk, close, and optionally upgrade in place to TLS via upgradeTls. Reader and Writer are the read-only and write-only projections of RawTransport. Concrete implementations live in subpath exports: an in-memory loopback pair for tests, a Node net/tls socket wrapper, and a WebRTC data channel transport. ReadBuffer and WriteBuffer in the root export provide line- and size-based buffering on top of any Reader/Writer.

Entry points

Entry point	Description
@webnet/transport	Transport interfaces and operation options.
@webnet/transport/node	NodeTransport-backed nodeDialer, NodeListener, nodeListen for TCP/TLS sockets.
@webnet/transport/loopback	loopbackTransportPair, loopbackListener for in-process, dependency-free transports.
@webnet/transport/webrtc	DataChannelTransport, openDataChannel, acceptDataChannel for WebRTC data channels.
@webnet/transport/buffer	ReadBuffer, WriteBuffer, and prependTransport for bounded reads, buffering, and CRLF line reads.
@webnet/transport/operation	abortable and writeAll helpers for cancellable operations and complete writes.
@webnet/transport/stream	Web Stream adapters and stream-to-writer pumping with backpressure.

_internals entry points are unstable and are not part of the public API.

Usage

import { loopbackListener } from "@webnet/transport/loopback"
import type { RawTransport } from "@webnet/transport"

const [listener, dialer] = loopbackListener()
const acceptPromise = listener.accept()
const client: RawTransport = await dialer.dial("localhost", 0)
const server = await acceptPromise

await client.write(new TextEncoder().encode("hello"))
const chunk = await server.read()
if (chunk === null) {
  // The peer cleanly ended its byte stream. Later reads also return null.
} else {
  console.log(new TextDecoder().decode(chunk))
}

RawTransport.read() resolves to null for clean end-of-stream and keeps returning null on later reads. Connection failures reject the promise, so callers can distinguish an orderly peer close from a broken transport without inspecting error messages.

Pass an AbortSignal through the operation options to cancel read(), write(), or upgradeTls(). An already-aborted signal rejects with signal.reason without touching the transport. If the signal aborts after I/O starts, the operation rejects with the same reason and closes the transport. Closing is required because a read may have consumed bytes and a write may have sent some bytes.

See also

• @webnet/http — HTTP client/server built on RawTransport.
• @webnet/ssh — SSH transport layer built on RawDialer/RawListener.
• @webnet/tsconnect — dials Tailscale connections through this package's transport interfaces.