Go is an open-source programming language that makes it easy to build simple, reliable, and efficient software.

Go is a server-side language, but today we can compile Go code to WebAssembly as well - making it possible for us to bring programs written in minimalistic Go code into the browser!

With this collection, we will learn how to compile and run Go WebAssembly programs in Node.js and the browser, and how our Go code can interop with JavaScript and manipulate the DOM. We will also talk about configuring our VS Code workspace and optimizing the Go WASM binary size.

*Go ^1.12, Node ^12.14.0*

Compiling Go programs to WebAssembly does not require Emscripten, and the process is pretty straight forward. In this lesson, we will learn how to compile a simple Go program to a WebAssembly binary, then execute it with Node.js.

Compile and execute a Go WebAssembly program with Node

*Go ^1.12, TinyGo ^0.12.0, Node ^12.14.0*

The WebAssembly binaries generated by the standard Go compiler are often unnecessarily large. In this lesson, we will learn techniques to optimize Go Wasm binary size with an alternative compiler that is designed for microcontrollers - TinyGo.

Optimize Go WebAssembly binary size with TinyGo

*Go ^1.12*

In this lesson, we will learn how to load and use a Go WebAssembly binary in a web app.

Manually load a Go WebAssembly binary in a browser

*Go ^1.12*

When using Go modules related to WebAssembly, namely `syscall/js`, the default settings in VS Code will trigger error reports like *"Build constraints exclude all Go files"* in the editor. In this lesson, we will learn how to fix this and improve our coding experience.

Configure Go Build Constraints in VS Code to work with WebAssembly

*Go ^1.12*

In this lesson, we will see how we can interact with the JavaScript environment by using Go's `syscall/js` module to call and pass values into a JavaScript function, and access variables available in JS land.

Access JS Functions and Variables from a Go WebAssembly Program

*Go ^1.12*

The ability to manipulate the DOM is sometimes crucial when it comes to working with apps powered by WebAssembly. In this lesson, we will see how we can utilize Go's `syscall/js` module to interact with the DOM by porting a sample JS code snippet to Go.

Interact with the DOM using Go's `syscall/js` module

*Go ^1.12*

In this lesson, we will see how we can expose Go lang functions from a WebAssembly module so that we can interact with them from the JavaScript environment.

WebAssembly with the Go Language

Xiaoru Li

Course Content