getScreenMedia

What is this?

A tiny browser module that gives us a simple API for getting access to a user's screen.

It gives us a cleaner node.js-style, error-first API and cross-browser handling. No browser support checking necessary; lack of support is treated in the same way as when the user rejects the request: the callback gets passed an error as the first argument.

Suitable for use with browserify/CommonJS on the client.

Installing

npm install getscreenmedia

How to use it

First build and install a domain-specific extension for Chrome. Firefox and Microsoft Edge will work out of the box.

Use the snippet below to get a screen stream, similar to getUserMedia.

var getScreenMedia = require('getscreenmedia');

getScreenMedia(function (err, stream) {
    // if the browser doesn't support user media
    // or the user says "no" the error gets passed
    // as the first argument.
    if (err) {
       console.log('failed');
    } else {
       console.log('got a stream', stream);  
    }
});

Why?

All supported browsers require the use of an extension and don't offer an cross-browser API which is annoying and error-prone. Node-style (error-first) APIs that are cross-browser, installable with npm and runnable on the client === win!

Error handling

Error handling (denied requests, etc) are handled mostly by the underlying getUserMedia lib. However this adds one more error type:

• "HTTPS_REQUIRED"

Because that's a current requirement of Chrome.

See the handling errors section of the getUserMedia lib for details about how errors are handled.

License

MIT The Firefox sample extension is licensed under MPL 2.0

Created By

If you like this, follow: @HenrikJoreteg on twitter.