tts-google

A simple and efficient Google Text-to-Speech (TTS) library for Node.js that converts text to speech using Google's TTS service.

Features

• 🎵 Convert text to speech using Google's TTS API
• 🌍 Support for 50+ languages and language variants
• 💾 Save audio to file (MP3 format)
• 🔊 Stream audio data
• 📦 Get audio as buffer for further processing
• 🖥️ Built-in HTTP server for TTS service
• 🚀 Promise-based API with async/await support

Installation

npm install tts-google

Dependencies

This package requires the following dependencies:

npm install multistream async fake-useragent request

Quick Start

const TTS = require('tts-google');

// Create TTS instance
const tts = new TTS('en'); // English

// Convert text to speech and save as file
async function example() {
    try {
        const filename = await tts.saveToFile('Hello World!', 'output.mp3');
        console.log(`Audio saved as: ${filename}`);
    } catch (error) {
        console.error('Error:', error);
    }
}

example();

API Reference

Constructor

const tts = new TTS(language)

• language (string, optional): Language code (default: 'en')

Methods

saveToFile(text, filename)

Converts text to speech and saves as an audio file.

const filename = await tts.saveToFile('Hello World!', 'hello.mp3');

Parameters:

• text (string): Text to convert to speech
• filename (string): Output filename (MP3 format)

Returns: Promise that resolves to the filename

getAudioBuffer(text)

Converts text to speech and returns audio data as a Buffer.

const audioBuffer = await tts.getAudioBuffer('Hello World!');
console.log(`Buffer size: ${audioBuffer.length} bytes`);

Parameters:

• text (string): Text to convert to speech

Returns: Promise that resolves to a Buffer containing audio data

playAudio(text)

Streams audio data (requires additional audio player implementation).

await tts.playAudio('Hello World!');

Note: This method provides a stream but requires an audio player like node-speaker to actually play the audio.

Static Methods

TTS.getAvailableLanguages()

Returns an object containing all supported languages.

const languages = TTS.getAvailableLanguages();
console.log(languages);
// Output: { 'en': 'English', 'es': 'Spanish', ... }

Supported Languages

The library supports 50+ languages including:

{
  'af': 'Afrikaans',
  'sq': 'Albanian', 
  'ar': 'Arabic',
  'hy': 'Armenian',
  'ca': 'Catalan',
  'zh': 'Chinese',
  'zh-cn': 'Chinese (Mandarin/China)',
  'zh-tw': 'Chinese (Mandarin/Taiwan)', 
  'zh-yue': 'Chinese (Cantonese)',
  'hr': 'Croatian',
  'cs': 'Czech',
  'da': 'Danish',
  'nl': 'Dutch',
  'en': 'English',
  'en-au': 'English (Australia)',
  'en-uk': 'English (United Kingdom)',
  'en-us': 'English (United States)',
  'eo': 'Esperanto',
  'fi': 'Finnish',
  'fr': 'French',
  'de': 'German',
  'el': 'Greek',
  'ht': 'Haitian Creole',
  'hi': 'Hindi',
  'hu': 'Hungarian',
  'is': 'Icelandic',
  'id': 'Indonesian',
  'it': 'Italian',
  'ja': 'Japanese',
  'ko': 'Korean',
  'la': 'Latin',
  'lv': 'Latvian',
  'mk': 'Macedonian',
  'no': 'Norwegian',
  'pl': 'Polish',
  'pt': 'Portuguese',
  'pt-br': 'Portuguese (Brazil)',
  'ro': 'Romanian',
  'ru': 'Russian',
  'sr': 'Serbian',
  'si': 'Sinhala (Sinhalese)',
  'sk': 'Slovak',
  'es': 'Spanish',
  'es-es': 'Spanish (Spain)',
  'es-us': 'Spanish (United States)',
  'sw': 'Swahili',
  'sv': 'Swedish',
  'ta': 'Tamil',
  'th': 'Thai',
  'tr': 'Turkish',
  'vi': 'Vietnamese',
  'cy': 'Welsh'
}

Advanced Usage

Multiple Languages

// English TTS
const ttsEn = new TTS('en');
const englishAudio = await ttsEn.getAudioBuffer('Hello World!');

// Spanish TTS
const ttsEs = new TTS('es');
const spanishAudio = await ttsEs.getAudioBuffer('¡Hola Mundo!');

// French TTS
const ttsFr = new TTS('fr');
const frenchAudio = await ttsFr.getAudioBuffer('Bonjour le monde!');

Error Handling

const tts = new TTS('en');

try {
    await tts.saveToFile('Your text here', 'output.mp3');
    console.log('Success!');
} catch (error) {
    if (error.message.includes('Language not supported')) {
        console.error('Invalid language code');
    } else {
        console.error('TTS Error:', error.message);
    }
}

Using with Express.js

const express = require('express');
const TTS = require('tts-google');

const app = express();
const tts = new TTS('en');

app.get('/speak', async (req, res) => {
    try {
        const text = req.query.text || 'Hello World!';
        const audioBuffer = await tts.getAudioBuffer(text);
        
        res.set({
            'Content-Type': 'audio/mpeg',
            'Content-Length': audioBuffer.length
        });
        res.send(audioBuffer);
    } catch (error) {
        res.status(500).json({ error: error.message });
    }
});

app.listen(3000, () => {
    console.log('TTS Server running on port 3000');
});

Testing

Run the included tests:

npm test

The test suite includes:

• Language availability check
• TTS instance creation
• Audio buffer generation
• File saving functionality
• Multi-language support

Technical Details

• Text Limit: Each TTS request is limited to 100 characters. Longer text is automatically chunked.
• Output Format: MP3 audio format
• Rate Limiting: The library uses fake user agents to avoid rate limiting
• Encoding: Supports UTF-8 text encoding

Troubleshooting

Common Issues

1. "Language not supported" error

   • Check if your language code is in the supported languages list
   • Use lowercase language codes (e.g., 'en' not 'EN')

2. Network errors

   • Ensure you have internet connectivity
   • Google's TTS service may occasionally be unavailable

3. File permission errors

   • Make sure the output directory is writable
   • Check file path permissions

Getting Help

If you encounter issues:

1. Check the GitHub Issues
2. Run the test suite to verify functionality
3. Ensure all dependencies are properly installed

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

License

ISC License

Author

K.Prabhasha - Evelocore

Keywords: tts, google, gtts, node, speech, voice, text-to-speech, audio, mp3