How to convert Golang to WebAssembly

In recent years, WebAssembly (wasm for short) technology has attracted more and more attention and popularity among developers. Its emergence has pushed web applications to a new level. By compiling the written code into wasm format and running JavaScript in a virtual machine (VM), efficient code execution and runtime guarantees can be achieved. Golang is an open source programming language. It is famous for its efficient running speed and powerful concurrency capabilities, and is constantly favored by developers. So, how to convert Golang to WebAssembly?

Before that, we must first understand the basic concepts of WebAssembly. WebAssembly is a low-level bytecode language designed as a portable target platform that can be compiled into machine code for multiple underlying hardware architectures. Its main goal is to provide an efficient and more secure execution environment for the Web platform. WebAssembly was originally designed to build high-performance browser applications, but in recent years, it has become more and more widely used, including running on the server side and being used in distributed systems, game servers, and cloud computing.

Golang language is a statically typed programming language known for its simplicity, speed, safety and concurrency. In Golang, we can use the go build command to compile the program into a binary file and then run it on different platforms. Developers who write code in Golang are highly regarded for its efficient code execution time and memory efficiency.

Now, we return to the topic of this article, "How to convert Golang to WebAssembly?" First, we need to use the compiler GOCC in Golang to compile the Golang program into WebAssembly bytecode in wasm format. When using GOCC, we need to enter the following command on the command line:

GOOS=js GOARCH=wasm go build -o main.wasm main.go

In the above command, "GOOS=js" means that we want to compile into JavaScript code, and "GOARCH=wasm" means that the target architecture is WebAssembly. Using this command, we can compile Golang code into wasm format, and the generated file is named "main.wasm".

We have compiled the Golang code into a wasm bytecode file. The next step is to load this wasm file in the web application and execute it. In JavaScript, we can use the WebAssembly.instantiateStreaming() API to load the wasm file and start the Wasm module. Here is a simple sample code:

async function loadWebAssembly(filename, importObject) {
    const wasmFile = await fetch(filename)
    const wasmBuffer = await wasmFile.arrayBuffer()
    const module = await WebAssembly.instantiate(wasmBuffer, importObject)
    return module.exports
}

loadWebAssembly('main.wasm', {}).then((exports) => {
    console.log(exports.add(2, 3))
})

In this example, we first get our wasm file through the fetch API, and then pass it as an ArrayBuffer object result to the WebAssembly.instantiate function. The importObject parameter is a JS object that can be used to tell the Wasm module how the program interacts with the JavaScript environment. In this example, we don't need to pass any parameters, so an empty object ({}) is used.

Finally, on the returned exports object, we can call the add function defined in the Golang code to execute our WebAssembly program.

In summary, we have learned how to convert a Golang program into a WebAssembly module, load and execute it in a web application. The emergence of WebAssembly technology has had a revolutionary impact on the field of Web applications, allowing us to have more efficient, secure, and complex Web applications. Therefore, we can see that converting Golang to WebAssembly will be a very promising and practical skill.

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