WebAssembly.instantiate()

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since October 2017.

The WebAssembly.instantiate() function allows you to compile and instantiate WebAssembly code. This function has two overloads:

The primary overload takes the WebAssembly binary code, in the form of a typed array or ArrayBuffer, and performs both compilation and instantiation in one step. The returned Promise resolves to both a compiled WebAssembly.Module and its first WebAssembly.Instance.
The secondary overload takes an already-compiled WebAssembly.Module and returns a Promise that resolves to an Instance of that Module. This overload is useful if the Module has already been compiled.

Warning: This method is not the most efficient way of fetching and instantiating Wasm modules. If at all possible, you should use the newer WebAssembly.instantiateStreaming() method instead, which fetches, compiles, and instantiates a module all in one step, directly from the raw bytecode, so doesn't require conversion to an ArrayBuffer.

Syntax

Primary overload — taking Wasm binary code

WebAssembly.instantiate(bufferSource, importObject);

Parameters

bufferSource: A typed array or ArrayBuffer containing the binary code of the Wasm module you want to compile, or a WebAssembly.Module.
importObject Optional: An object containing the values to be imported into the newly-created Instance, such as functions or WebAssembly.Memory objects. There must be one matching property for each declared import of the compiled module or else a WebAssembly.LinkError is thrown.

Return value

A Promise that resolves to a ResultObject which contains two fields:

module: A WebAssembly.Module object representing the compiled WebAssembly module. This Module can be instantiated again, shared via postMessage(), or cached.
instance: A WebAssembly.Instance object that contains all the Exported WebAssembly functions.

Exceptions

If either of the parameters are not of the correct type or structure, the promise rejects with a TypeError.
If the operation fails, the promise rejects with a WebAssembly.CompileError, WebAssembly.LinkError, or WebAssembly.RuntimeError, depending on the cause of the failure.

Secondary overload — taking a module object instance

WebAssembly.instantiate(module, importObject);

Parameters

module: The WebAssembly.Module object to be instantiated.
importObject Optional: An object containing the values to be imported into the newly-created Instance, such as functions or WebAssembly.Memory objects. There must be one matching property for each declared import of module or else a WebAssembly.LinkError is thrown.

Return value

A Promise that resolves to an WebAssembly.Instance object.

Exceptions

If either of the parameters are not of the correct type or structure, a TypeError is thrown.
If the operation fails, the promise rejects with a WebAssembly.CompileError, WebAssembly.LinkError, or WebAssembly.RuntimeError, depending on the cause of the failure.

Examples

Note: You'll probably want to use WebAssembly.instantiateStreaming() in most cases, as it is more efficient than instantiate().

First overload example

After fetching some WebAssembly bytecode using fetch, we compile and instantiate the module using the WebAssembly.instantiate() function, importing a JavaScript function into the WebAssembly Module in the process. We then call an Exported WebAssembly function that is exported by the Instance.

const importObject = {
  my_namespace: {
    imported_func(arg) {
      console.log(arg);
    },
  },
};

fetch("simple.wasm")
  .then((response) => response.arrayBuffer())
  .then((bytes) => WebAssembly.instantiate(bytes, importObject))
  .then((result) => result.instance.exports.exported_func());

Note: You can also find this example at index.html on GitHub (view it live also).

Second overload example

The following example (see our index-compile.html demo on GitHub, and view it live also) compiles the loaded simple.wasm byte code using the WebAssembly.compileStreaming() method and then sends it to a worker using postMessage().

const worker = new Worker("wasm_worker.js");

WebAssembly.compileStreaming(fetch("simple.wasm")).then((mod) =>
  worker.postMessage(mod),
);

In the worker (see wasm_worker.js) we define an import object for the module to use, then set up an event handler to receive the module from the main thread. When the module is received, we create an instance from it using the WebAssembly.instantiate() method and invoke an exported function from inside it.

const importObject = {
  my_namespace: {
    imported_func(arg) {
      console.log(arg);
    },
  },
};

onmessage = (e) => {
  console.log("module received from main thread");
  const mod = e.data;

  WebAssembly.instantiate(mod, importObject).then((instance) => {
    instance.exports.exported_func();
  });
};

Specifications

Specification
WebAssembly JavaScript Interface # dom-webassembly-instantiate

Browser compatibility

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