Return a Promise From play() when possible

[brandonocasey]

Description

There is currently a PR (#3907) that returns the native value of play to the user. In some cases (such a newer version of Chrome) this will be a Promise.

I think that we should try to always return a Promise if the browser supports them or a Promise library is provided (window.Promise || this.options_.Promise). This means that we will return the native Promise from play() if it is returned and return a "psuedo-native" Promise if play() does not return a Promise.

We will also have to be mindful of browsers that don't support promises at all and the specification for Promises from play.

[misteroneill]

This was actually a question at the meetup yesterday: would we support a polyfill or creating our own promise. So, that's a vote in this direction, I'd say.

[gkatsev]

Yup, I don't want to write our own promise implementation :)

[misteroneill]

Sorry, I meant we'd return a Promise as @brandonocasey is suggesting - not "create our own". Poor phrasing. 😆

[shikkaba]

Is there any update on this?

[gkatsev]

@shikkaba in Video.js v6, we already are returning a Promise from play() if the browser supports this. We have not made progress on making our own promise for the times that the browser doesn't support it.

[shikkaba]

@gkatsev Thank you for the reply. I'm just wondering because in Chrome I'm seeing the following:
Uncaught (in promise) DOMException: The play() request was interrupted by a call to pause().

[KevinBrogan]

@gkatsev videojs 7 does not return the native promise result from play()

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[gkatsev]

Actually, re-opening this one for the follow-up work for IE11 and browsers that don't return a promise from play().

[darktasevski]

@gkatsev Any update on this? 🙂

We have some issues with play() not being resolved on Smart TVs (LG, Tizen) and older browsers (IE 11). Not awaiting Promise is, in some cases, causing other errors, like:

• InvalidStateError Failed to read the 'buffered' property from 'SourceBuffer',
• NotSupportedError Failed to load because no supported source was found.

Example stack trace from one of our errors:

This is not happening if we await play(), but play() is not resolving sometimes so it's not an ideal solution.

[gkatsev]

So, looks like this issue should be closed. At some point we did add promise support for older browsers. However, you must either provide videojs with a promise polyfill or include a promise polyfill globally on those platforms.

@Puritanic can I ask you to open a new issue with more info filled out in the issue template? Like video.js versions and preferably a reduced test case.