ReadableStream: pipeThrough() method

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since June 2022.

Note: This feature is available in Web Workers.

The pipeThrough() method of the ReadableStream interface provides a chainable way of piping the current stream through a transform stream or any other writable/readable pair.

Piping a stream will generally lock it for the duration of the pipe, preventing other readers from locking it.

Syntax

js
pipeThrough(transformStream)
pipeThrough(transformStream, options)

Parameters

transformStream

A TransformStream (or an object with the structure {writable, readable}) consisting of a readable stream and a writable stream working together to transform some data from one form to another. Data written to the writable stream can be read in some transformed state by the readable stream. For example, a TextDecoder, has bytes written to it and strings read from it, while a video decoder has encoded bytes written to it and uncompressed video frames read from it.

options Optional

The options that should be used when piping to the writable stream. Available options are:

preventClose

If this is set to true, closing the source ReadableStream will no longer cause the destination WritableStream to be closed.

preventAbort

If this is set to true, errors in the source ReadableStream will no longer abort the destination WritableStream.

preventCancel

If this is set to true, errors in the destination WritableStream will no longer cancel the source ReadableStream.

signal

If set to an AbortSignal object, ongoing pipe operations can then be aborted via the corresponding AbortController.

Return value

The readable side of the transformStream.

Exceptions

TypeError

Thrown if the writable and/or readable property of transformStream are undefined.

Examples

In the following example (see Unpack chunks of a PNG for the full code running live, and png-transform-stream for the source code), an image is fetched and its body retrieved as a ReadableStream.

Next, we log the contents of the readable stream, use pipeThrough() to send it to a new function that creates a gray-scaled version of the stream, then log the new stream's contents too.

js
// Fetch the original image
fetch("png-logo.png")
  // Retrieve its body as ReadableStream
  .then((response) => response.body)
  .then((rs) => logReadableStream("Fetch Response Stream", rs))
  // Create a gray-scaled PNG stream out of the original
  .then((body) => body.pipeThrough(new PNGTransformStream()))
  .then((rs) => logReadableStream("PNG Chunk Stream", rs));

Specifications

Specification
Streams
# ref-for-rs-pipe-through②

Browser compatibility

desktop mobile server
Chrome
Edge
Firefox
Opera
Safari
Chrome Android
Firefox for Android
Opera Android
Safari on iOS
Samsung Internet
WebView Android
WebView on iOS
Bun
Deno
Node.js
pipeThrough
Chrome – Full support
Chrome 59 (Release date: 2017-06-05)
footnote Full support
Edge – Full support
Edge 79 (Release date: 2020-01-15)
footnote Full support
Firefox – Full support
Firefox 102 (Release date: 2022-06-28)
footnote Full support
Opera – Full support
Opera 46 (Release date: 2017-06-22)
footnote Full support
Safari – Full support
Safari 10.1 (Release date: 2017-03-27)
footnote Full support
Chrome Android – Full support
Chrome Android 59 (Release date: 2017-06-06)
footnote Full support
Firefox for Android – Full support
Firefox for Android 102 (Release date: 2022-06-28)
footnote Full support
Opera Android – Full support
Opera Android 43 (Release date: 2017-09-27)
footnote Full support
Safari on iOS – Full support
Safari on iOS 10.3 (Release date: 2017-03-27)
footnote Full support
Samsung Internet – Full support
Samsung Internet 7 (Release date: 2018-03-16)
footnote Full support
WebView Android – Full support
WebView Android 59 (Release date: 2017-06-06)
footnote Full support
WebView on iOS – Full support
WebView on iOS 10.3 (Release date: 2017-03-27)
footnote Full support
Bun – Full support
Bun 1 (Release date: 2023-09-08)
footnote Full support
Deno – Full support
Deno 1 (Release date: 2020-05-13)
footnote Full support
Node.js – Full support
Node.js 16.5 (Release date: 2021-07-14)
footnote Full support

Legend

Tip: you can click/tap on a cell for more information.

Full support
Full support

See also