Dynamic import of native addons

[hosnar]

Hi, i'm not sure this is the place to ask this, but i didn't know where else to do it.

I'm trying to require native node module in my Electron main process. This works fine on development where path is static:

const addon = require('./addon.node')

But when i package production build, my path isn't static anymore, since it differs by OS. So i must use dynamic path like this:

const addon = require(process.resourcesPath + '/native/addon.node')

When i run this packaged app i keep getting error:

Error: Cannot find module

Also, i'm using extraResources to move my addon to Resources folder when packaging.

I tried different workarounds, i also tried native-ext-loader and node-loader for webpack but it doesn't seem to help.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[nklayman]

You will want to place your addon.node in the public folder. Then, you can access it in serve and build with path.join(__static, 'addon.node'). See the docs on static assets for more details. You will not need any special extraResources config with this method.

[hosnar]

Thank you very much for your answer. But this still doesn't seem to work for me, i get this error:

Error: Cannot find module '/Applications/MyApp.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar/addon.node'

Path must be incorrect, since app.asar is not a directory.

Code i used:

const loadAddon = () => {
  if (!process.env.WEBPACK_DEV_SERVER_URL) {
    return require(path.join(__static, 'addon.node'))
  } else {
    // Dev
  }
}

const proc = loadAddon()

For webpack loader i'm using:

chainWebpackMainProcess: config => {
  config.module.rule('node').test(/\.node$/).use('node-loader').loader('node-loader')
}

And i've put addon.node in public directory.

Do you see anything i could be doing wrong? Thank you

[nklayman]

Looks like this is a duplicate of #334. Try the solution that worked there and see if that helps.

[hosnar]

Thank you very much for you help! With the solution you linked, i could make it work like this:

const loadAddonFile = () => {
  const path = require('path')
  const filePath = `/addons/addon-${process.platform}.node`
  if (process.env.WEBPACK_DEV_SERVER_URL) {
    // eslint-disable-next-line
    return __non_webpack_require__(path.join(process.cwd(), filePath))
  } else {
    // eslint-disable-next-line
    return __non_webpack_require__(path.join(process.resourcesPath, filePath))
  }
}

const addon = loadAddonFile()

I used os.platform since addon is compiled for each OS. And i still ended up using extraResources as mentioned before, without webpack node loader. This probably isn't the best way to go about it but it was the only way i could make it work. So, just posting my solution, as it might help someone else, maybe.

Thanks again. Cheers

[nklayman]

Just a heads up, process.cwd() resolves to the dir you are in when you launch the executable, so I definitely wouldn't use it to get a path to a resource. Try using app.getPath instead.

[hosnar]

Oh, ok. Thank you for the heads up, i'll fix it.

[netcore-jroger]

I use __non_webpack_require__ function to dynamic load module. but it not support import syntax. so I use esm package wrap it. like this

const nonWebpackRequire = __non_webpack_require__('esm')(module);
for (let mainProcessFile of files) {
  nonWebpackRequire(mainProcessFile);
}