HTML5 Canvas, 2nd Edition

Finding the Supported Audio Format

Before the code in the previous section will work, we need to define the supportedAudioFormat() function. Because we are adding audio objects dynamically to the HTML page, we do not have a way to define multiple <source> tags like we can in HTML. Instead, we are going to use the canPlayType() method of the audio object to tell us which type of audio file to load. We already introduced you to the canPlayType() method in Chapter 6, but to refresh your memory, canPlayType() takes a single parameter—a MIME type. It returns a text string of maybe, probably, or "" (nothing). We are going to use these values to figure out which media type to load and play. Just like in Chapter 6, and for the sake of this exercise, we are going to assume that both maybe and probably equate to yes. If we encounter either result with any of our three MIME types (audio/ogg, audio/wav, audio/mp3), we will return the extension associated with that MIME type so that the sound file can be loaded.

Note

The next function is essentially the same as the one we created in Chapter 6 to handle video formats. The obvious changes here are with the MIME types for audio.

In the following function, audio represents the instance of HTMLAudioElement that we will test. The returnExtension variable represents that valid extension for the first MIME type found that has the value of maybe or probably returned:

function supportedAudioFormat(audio) {
   var returnExtension = "";
   if (audio.canPlayType