| # External Buffer |
| |
| **Some runtimes other than Node.js have dropped support for external buffers**. |
| On runtimes other than Node.js, node-api methods may return |
| `napi_no_external_buffers_allowed` to indicate that external |
| buffers are not supported. One such runtime is Electron as |
| described in this issue |
| [electron/issues/35801](https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/35801). |
| |
| In order to maintain broadest compatibility with all runtimes, |
| you may define `NODE_API_NO_EXTERNAL_BUFFERS_ALLOWED` in your addon before |
| includes for the node-api and node-addon-api headers. Doing so will hide the |
| functions that create external buffers. This will ensure a compilation error |
| occurs if you accidentally use one of these methods. |
| |
| In node-addon-api, the `Napi::Buffer::NewOrCopy` provides a convenient way to |
| create an external buffer, or allocate a new buffer and copy the data when the |
| external buffer is not supported. |
