No output is produced by SVG renderer when used with Node.js

[cheap-glitch]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

Current Behavior

Using the low level APIs to render a Guitar Pro tab in Node doesn't produce any output. No error is being logged either.

Expected Behavior

The renderer should output some SVG markup.

Steps To Reproduce

This is the code I used, it's directly taken from the official guide on how to use alphaTab in Node.js:

Test code

import fs from "node:fs";
import process from "node:process";
import * as alphaTab from "@coderline/alphatab";

// 1. Load file
const fileData = fs.readFileSync(process.argv[2]);
const settings = new alphaTab.Settings();
const score = alphaTab.importer.ScoreLoader.loadScoreFromBytes(new Uint8Array(fileData), settings);
console.log(score);

// 2. Setup renderer
settings.core.engine = "svg";
const renderer = new alphaTab.rendering.ScoreRenderer(settings);
renderer.width = 1200;

// 3. Listen to events
let svgChunks = [];
renderer.error.on((error) => {
	console.error(error);
});
renderer.preRender.on((isResize) => {
	svgChunks = []; // Clear on new rendering
});
renderer.partialRenderFinished.on((r) => {
	svgChunks.push({
		svg: r.renderResult,
		width: r.width,
		height: r.height,
	});
});
renderer.renderFinished.on((r) => {
	console.log(svgChunks, r.totalWidth, r.totalHeight);
});

// 4. Fire off rendering
renderer.renderScore(score, [0]);

// 5. Log the SVG chunks
console.log(svgChunks.map((c) => c.svg).join("\n"));

When running this I can see some data being logged from the score object, so it's being imported correctly, but then nothing get rendered.

Output

<ref *1> Score {
  _currentRepeatGroup: <ref *2> RepeatGroup {
    masterBars: [ [MasterBar], [MasterBar] ],
    opening: MasterBar {
      alternateEndings: 0,
      nextMasterBar: [MasterBar],
      previousMasterBar: null,
      index: 0,
      keySignature: 0,
      keySignatureType: 0,
      isDoubleBar: false,
      isRepeatStart: false,
      repeatCount: 0,
      timeSignatureNumerator: 4,
      timeSignatureDenominator: 4,
      timeSignatureCommon: false,
      tripletFeel: 0,
      section: null,
      tempoAutomation: [Automation],
      fermata: null,
      start: 0,
      isAnacrusis: false,
      displayScale: 1,
      displayWidth: -1,
      score: [Circular *1],
      repeatGroup: [Circular *2]
    },
    closings: [],
    isClosed: false
  },
  _openedRepeatGroups: [
    <ref *2> RepeatGroup {
      masterBars: [Array],
      opening: [MasterBar],
      closings: [],
      isClosed: false
    }
  ],
  _properlyOpenedRepeatGroups: 0,
  album: '',
  artist: '',
  copyright: '',
  instructions: '',
  music: '',
  notices: '',
  subTitle: '',
  title: 'Lorem ipsum',
  words: '',
  tab: '',
  tempo: 120,
  tempoLabel: '',
  masterBars: [
    MasterBar {
      alternateEndings: 0,
      nextMasterBar: [MasterBar],
      previousMasterBar: null,
      index: 0,
      keySignature: 0,
      keySignatureType: 0,
      isDoubleBar: false,
      isRepeatStart: false,
      repeatCount: 0,
      timeSignatureNumerator: 4,
      timeSignatureDenominator: 4,
      timeSignatureCommon: false,
      tripletFeel: 0,
      section: null,
      tempoAutomation: [Automation],
      fermata: null,
      start: 0,
      isAnacrusis: false,
      displayScale: 1,
      displayWidth: -1,
      score: [Circular *1],
      repeatGroup: [RepeatGroup]
    },
    MasterBar {
      alternateEndings: 0,
      nextMasterBar: null,
      previousMasterBar: [MasterBar],
      index: 1,
      keySignature: 0,
      keySignatureType: 0,
      isDoubleBar: false,
      isRepeatStart: false,
      repeatCount: 0,
      timeSignatureNumerator: 4,
      timeSignatureDenominator: 4,
      timeSignatureCommon: false,
      tripletFeel: 0,
      section: null,
      tempoAutomation: null,
      fermata: null,
      start: 3840,
      isAnacrusis: false,
      displayScale: 1,
      displayWidth: -1,
      score: [Circular *1],
      repeatGroup: [RepeatGroup]
    }
  ],
  tracks: [
    Track {
      index: 0,
      staves: [Array],
      playbackInfo: [PlaybackInformation],
      color: [Color],
      name: 'Steel Guitar',
      shortName: 's.guit.',
      defaultSystemsLayout: 3,
      systemsLayout: [Array],
      percussionArticulations: [],
      score: [Circular *1]
    }
  ],
  defaultSystemsLayout: 4,
  systemsLayout: [ 4 ],
  stylesheet: RenderStylesheet { hideDynamics: true }
}
[] 1200 444

Link to jsFiddle, CodePen, Project

No response

Found in Version

1.3

Platform

Node.js

Environment

- **OS**: Windows
- **Node.js**: v23.7.0 (latest)

Anything else?

No response

[Danielku15]

The guide is slightly outdated. The low-level APIs were extended lately as part of the Android implementations to further delay the rendering. I need to update the docs accordingly to this change.

You need additionally this event listener which is triggered when the layouting of one "partial result" finished, and then directly initiate the rendering of it. In UI environments this mechanism is used to first compute the layout and then do a "lazy rendering" as individual parts become visible while scrolling.

renderer.partialLayoutFinished.on((r) => {
    renderer.renderResult(r.id);
})

Working code:

import fs from "node:fs";
import process from "node:process";
import * as alphaTab from "@coderline/alphatab";

// 1. Load file
const fileData = fs.readFileSync(process.argv[2]);
const settings = new alphaTab.Settings();
const score = alphaTab.importer.ScoreLoader.loadScoreFromBytes(new Uint8Array(fileData), settings);
console.log(score);

// 2. Setup renderer
settings.core.engine = "svg";
const renderer = new alphaTab.rendering.ScoreRenderer(settings);
renderer.width = 1200;

// 3. Listen to events
let svgChunks = [];
renderer.error.on((error) => {
	console.error(error);
});
renderer.preRender.on((isResize) => {
	svgChunks = []; // Clear on new rendering
});
renderer.partialRenderFinished.on((r) => {
	svgChunks.push({
		svg: r.renderResult,
		width: r.width,
		height: r.height,
	});
});
renderer.renderFinished.on((r) => {
	console.log(svgChunks, r.totalWidth, r.totalHeight);
});
renderer.partialLayoutFinished.on((r) => {
    renderer.renderResult(r.id);
})

// 4. Fire off rendering
renderer.renderScore(score, [0]);

// 5. Log the SVG chunks
console.log(svgChunks.map((c) => c.svg).join("\n"));

[Danielku15]

@cheap-glitch You can now find an updated and extended guide for node.js here: https://next.alphatab.net/docs/guides/nodejs