Consider a static file API

[FrederikBolding]

Seems that a general problem for larger snaps that require large WASM modules (or other large files) is that the cold start is slow. What if instead of using our state API for this (which is kind of hacky) we build an API that let's snaps lazy load it's own static files at runtime?

E.g.

export const onRpcRequest: OnRpcRequestHandler = async ({ origin, request }) => {
  const program = await snap.request({ method: 'snap_loadFile', params: { fileName: 'program.wasm' }})
  const module = await WebAssembly.compile(program);
  const wasm = await instantiate(module, {});
  (...)
};

A snap could then specify the static files it needs at runtime in the manifest.

[martines3000]

Hi. I have 2 questions:

1. Where would the snap load the files from. Would we just package the needed files together with the snap.js file and publish it on NPM?
2. Would this be extensible, as to be able to load other large files like JSON (file.json, etc...), or would this be limited to .wasm files?

Overall, I find the idea great 👍 , and it would definitely help projects with large files.

[FrederikBolding]

1. Where would the snap load the files from. Would we just package the needed files together with the snap.js file and publish it on NPM?
2. Would this be extensible, as to be able to load other large files like JSON (file.json, etc...), or would this be limited to .wasm files?

1. Yeah, I imagine they would just go in the dist folder next to the snap bundle. You would have to reference them in the manifest, e.g. files: ["./dist/foo.json"] and that should make them loadable asynchronously at snap runtime.
2. I don't see why this couldn't work for any file type, loadFile() could just return an Uint8Array and the snap parse that as it wants to.

[martines3000]

Thanks for clarifying, the concept makes sense and I like it. 🚀

[FrederikBolding]

@martines3000 Coming soon to Flask 👀