The selectLoader() and selectLoaderSync() functions will automatically select an appropriate loader for a specific resource. selectLoader() is called by the parse() and load() functions, but can also be called directly from applications.

Loader selection heuristics are based on:

Filename (or url) extensions
MIME types (from Response content-type headers or Blob.type/File.type fields)
Initial bytes - for certain inputs, the initial bytes in the supplied data can be compared against known "magic bytes" for various file formats.

loader registry - selectLoader() and selectLoaderSync() are also aware of the loader registry. The list of pre-registered loaders will be included in the search for a compatible loader, unless options.ignoreRegisteredLoaders is true.

Usage

Select a loader from a list of provided loaders:

import {selectLoaderSync} from '@loaders.gl/core';
import {ArrowLoader} from '@loaders.gl/arrow';
import {CSVLoader} from '@loaders.gl/csv';

selectLoaderSync('filename.csv', [ArrowLoader, CSVLoader]); // => CSVLoader

Select a loader from pre-registered loaders in the loader registry:

import {registerLoaders, selectLoader} from '@loaders.gl/core';
import {ArrowLoader} from '@loaders.gl/arrow';
import {CSVLoader} from '@loaders.gl/csv';

registerLoaders(ArrowLoader, CSVLoader);

await selectLoader('filename.csv'); // => CSVLoader

Select a loader by specifying MIME type (using unregistered MIME types, see below)

const data = new Blob([string], {type: 'application/x.csv'});
await selectLoader(blob); // => CSVLoader

The async selectLoader function can identify loaders without extension and mimeType by content sniffing Blob and File objects (useful when user drags and drops files into your application).

const data = new Blob(['DRACO...'] /* Binary Draco files start with these characters */]);
await selectLoader(blob, DracoLoader); // => DracoLoader

Functions

`selectLoader(data: Response | ArrayBuffer | String | Blob, ..., loaders?: LoaderWithParser[], options?: object, context?: object): Promise<boolean>`

Selects an appropriate loader for a file from a list of candidate loaders by examining the data parameter, looking at URL extension, mimeType ('Content-Type') and/or an initial data chunk.

Parameters:

data - data to perform autodetection against
loaders - can be a single loader or an array of loaders, or null.
options - See LoaderOptions.
options.nothrow=false - Return null instead of throwing exception if no loader can be found

Returns:

A single loader (or null if options.nothrow was set and no matching loader was found).

Throws:

If no matching loader was found, and options.nothrow was not set.

Regarding the loaders parameter:

A single loader object will be returned without matching.
a null loader list will use the pre-registered list of loaders.
A supplied list of loaders will be searched for a matching loader.

`selectLoaderSync(data: Response | ArrayBuffer | String | Blob, ..., loaders?: LoaderWithParser[], options?: object, context?: object): boolean`

Supported Formats

strings / non-data urls:
strings / data urls: The mime type will be extracted from the data url prologue (if available)
fetch Response objects: url and headers.get('Content-Type') fields will be used.
File and Blob objects:

Peeking into batched input sources is not supported directly by selectLoader:

Response: Avoids requesting initial data to make sure the response body is not marked as used.
Stream: It is not possible to non-destructively peek into a stream.
Iterator/AsyncIterator: it is not possible to peek into an iterator.

Instead use helpers to get access to initialContents and pass it in separately.

MIME types

If the standard MIME types for each format are not precise enough, loaders.gl also supports unregistered MIME types. Each loader will match the application/x.<id> where the <id> is the documented id of the loader, e.g. application/x.ply/application/x.draco/etc ...

Remarks

File extensions - An attempt will be made to extract a file extension by stripping away query parameters and base path before matching against known loader extensions.
Stream autodetection - Currently not well supported.