Re: [w3ctag/design-reviews] Realms API ECMAScript Proposal (#542)

> Also, I've had a use-case for Realms for several years now and I'm not sure the current approach still allows me to do what I want to do...
> 
> A while back I designed an extension to [Home Documents for HTTP APIs](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-nottingham-json-home/) that adds JS function bindings to HTTP API endpoints. The idea is that a browser can load the document describing the HTTP API, auto-generate a class that implements the API as JS methods, and return an instance of that class ( a 'remote object'). The consumer of the API just sees a regular JS object, whose implementation comes from the server (each method returns a promise that does a Fetch under the hood as defined by the Home Document). The Home Document can also carry internal state exposed as properties on the remote object (in addition to private state), and that state can be manipulated by the HTTP API by returning a JSON-Patch. I also built a polyfill that implements this (this repo is a bit out of date, I've been using a more recent version in production code, but it gets the idea across): https://github.com/plinss/remote-web-objects (the live-demo is no longer online)
> 
> One feature I wanted to add is to allow the Home Document to also carry raw JS code that implements synchronous methods run entirely client side. That code should be restricted to interact with the remote object and nothing else. I was planning on being able to create a Realm that's scoped to the remote object. Doing this would require the ability to share that object's internal state between the code running in the realm and the Realm's parent. It's not clear if this kind of thing can still be built with the current proposal.

You're not alone. This functionality reflects what we've been trying to push forward for so long until we had to find an alternative with this current callable boundary API that still resolves most use cases, but - as you point out - not all of them.

It is hard for me to tell you that you could try using a membrane framework that gives a better sense of object identities and injection, but I feel this has a very steep learning curve and cost for initial implementation. The membranes systems works for us in this callable boundary realms API and many other orgs and projects already using membranes.

Unfortunately, we faced pushback - as you can even find in this thread - about giving object access cross realms. Although, the object access already exist today in the web platform through iframes. I believe @gwhitworth and @caridy might wanna say more about this.


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