consider exposing a type attribute on Client

[wanderview]

Currently Clients.matchAll() considers three different types of Client objects:

1. Window
2. DedicatedWorker
3. SharedWorker

Currently its only possible to differentiate the Window client using instanceof WindowClient. Since the algorithm operates on the type, though, it would be nice to expose it for dedicated and shared workers as well.

So, something like:

interface Client
{
  readonly attribute DOMString type;
}

The value would match those used in Clients.matchAll().

As a side note, I find it annoying that "worker" is mapped to DedicatedWorker. I think it would have been nicer to use "dedicatedworker" and make "worker" map to all Worker types.

[annevk]

Why? Constructors are Worker and SharedWorker.

[wanderview]

Why? Constructors are Worker and SharedWorker.

I guess I was thinking of how [Exposed] works in webidl.

Anyway, the naming of the type is a side issue to the main idea here.

[jungkees]

I think it's a good idea to expose type to Client interface. Returned clients can be one of "window", "worker", and "sharedworker" indeed. For the type of the attribute, we can use the enum, ClientType preventing the getter from returning "all". Would it make sense?

partial interface Client
{
  readonly attribute ClientType type;
}

For naming, I give my five cents to keeping consistency to the existing names.

[wanderview]

Works for me. I'd like to hear from someone at google if they think its something they would implement, though.

[mkruisselbrink]

Not sure if I speak for Google, but it does sound like a sensible addition.

[jungkees]

I labeled it V1 as it'd be a simple addition that won't break the time line itself. But if anyone would argue we should add it only to the Nightly, I'd be fine with that.

[makotoshimazu]

FYI: Chromium has started to implement this at https://crrev.com/2845963002 .